The People's Pandemic

This is my BA(Hons) Decorative Arts graduate collection, exploring the Coronavirus pandemic and looking at how different groups of people have been impacted. I focused my research on investigating how NHS staff, key workers, politicians and the everyday person were impacted by the virus and how life had changed for each of them. I developed a character to represent each group based on real people, portrayed through illustrations on the forms. The forms also link to each character, further reinforcing their role in society. Furthermore, I wanted to create a maximalist finish to my pieces to represent how overwhelming the year has been for many. Therefore, the characters are surrounded by a series of motifs that are symbolic of people’s experiences, as well as various words and phrases stamped into the surface that have become common over the pandemic and summarise how life has changed. I created four vessels, all of which are pictured both front and back.