In 2019 I started studying at TOMA (https://www.toma-art.com/). . TOMA is an artist led, alternative education model and non-hierachical approach to post-graduate art education.
Unfortunately COVID happened so our final show ended up opening in October 2021, 15 months later than expected.
TOMA did drag me through lockdown. The show, a beacon on the horizon albeit one that shifted like sand gave a small slice of context for the future. Tend To It, the title we chose for the show, is a poignant starting point, a reminder that we all need to tend to our lives, our nearest and dearest and to what our post covid future will or won’t be.
Below are my original thoughts about the show:
I honour my past, I really do, but lately it’s just been rubbish. These last two years have sucked the life out of life. How do you make in a period of decay? When you question everything in your life… it’s paralysing. I retreat into depression, a cold and lonely but familiar place.
How do you emerge from that? After a long silence I finally pick up a book, I hold it in my hands, inspect its weight, try to remind myself of its presence when I’m on the bus, weaponise it as a tool with which to force myself out of this stupor.
Equally I think about making again. Tufting, quilting, sewing, mending; another safe space, a place where I am comforted by the weight of history, tradition, knowledge, rhythm. I feel the women who shaped me and I finally start to feel whole again. Soon. Soon there will be tangible change here.
Jessica Scott 