Reporting in miniature...
My late father and I had a standing joke: that his ideal scale to work at was the size of a building and mine was the size of a postage stamp. So he’d be laughing like a drain that I answered The Correspondence Collective’s open call for its exhibition Restriction – miniature responses to the pandemic, for online display in type trays.
I did a tiny spin-off of my lockdown project Dispatches from a Small World, which reports from my back garden. And even I found it a challenge. It involved a 00 brush I hadn’t used since I was at college, some test pieces and at that scale, a lot of decision-making on what to leave out.
The pieces show things that had taken on new importance in the pandemic: garden, storecupboard, front door and the wall that has become my work from home backdrop on video calls.
So why get involved? Because I’m curious. Because trying stuff out and noticing things recalibrates my thinking. Because that’s good for all of my work.
But there has also been the unexpected discovery of seeing and learning about the huge variety of mini works in the show. Watch The Correspondence Collective’s exhibition opening film and find out more about their project here. I'm in tray 9.
