What Now?

During Melbourne’s long lockdown I turned to making face masks for a fundraiser. I made approximately 300 masks for men women and children whilst at home and raised over $2000 for a local cause. Utilising the materials and skills and resources I had available to me at home I was able to fulfil an urgent need in the community for comfortable protective face masks, whilst fundraising for my son’s school and in particular for his Grade 6 graduation event, which we decided deserved to be super special occasion, if it were to go ahead, given the terrible time the Grade 6 children were having in the second 15 week long lockdown.

Jump forward to 2021 and I wanted to acknowledge that whilst I was unable to create participatory public art during this time, I was still creating and making. Once out of lockdown again Melbournians moved tentatively back out in our shared spaces. Government regulations changed weekly regarding social distancing and the number of people allowed per metre of space in shops and cafe’s and in the first half of 2021 mask wearing has been gradually reduced. What Now? signifies the changed world we find ourselves in. The ‘covid normal’ is the society we are now navigating on a daily basis. Melbourne was slow to return to using public transport with many people choosing to drive to work instead to feel safer from the pandemic. Many people still work from home and the CDB is only at 1/3 its usual capacity which has huge impact of city based services that provide for the commuting work force in the form of cafe’s pharmacies, and retail stores. What does the pandemic mean for public space in Melbourne? How can we reshape our city to minimise transmission of disease? What changes can be made both short and long term to ensure our public spaces remain open, accessible and safe to use?

I made a face mask posing the question ‘What Now?’ and documented my visits to public spaces of the Melbourne CDB. Here I made a performative claim to space. Inserting myself in the some of the most highly populated public spaces of the CBD, I noted it was less the question posed by myself as the wearer, and more about the act of being photographed that caught people’s attention and created the performative gesture.

Most strange of all was that, after 80 days with zero community transmissions of Covid-19 and life almost returning to some kind of normal, within in little over a week there was a significant outbreak and we were plunged into lockdown once again!