‘Beyond 40 days’ 2020-2021. is an exploration of confinement made during and beyond the 40 days of Covid restrictions in 2020. This initial confinement lasted from Easter morning until the gradual breakdown of regulation started to bring about a return to an unsustainable future called 'normality'.
It explores this sense of confinement from within the remains of a historic rural orchard defined only by its hedges. Consequently it becomes about times and events we forget, remember, hear about but don't experience directly, and times we do not know (the near future)
The remains of the historic orchard contains a garden structured around a particular geometry, that coincidently contain a specific range of plants from before the C18th that talk of the world and the season of a new beginning. The garden forms a ‘Paradise’ that gets compromised by the eventual sense of 'normality' as people break regulation.
'Beyond 40 days' concerns a specific location and time. The film-work’s primary physical location will mean it will remain in the property attached to the orchard space.
The film-work actually starts with four storms that flow one after another in close succession from January 2020 rather like an omen and moves to the end with a distant view of Mars leaving the screen. The rich experience of the natural world that was followed from 4am on Easter Day in the garden forms a constant sound thread throughout the whole film-work as do the headlines that depict events beyond our senses. A woman looks outward through each of the hedges surveying the external space but also remembering places that had been visited. However as the pandemic continued, the initial 40 days from Easter was also extended. The so called new normality that we had hoped would come from that experience of the natural world, instead, simply degenerated into the noise and impact of people disregarding regulation. The woman standing looking outward now looks inward masked and with dark glasses so identity is hidden - the confinement continues.