Lockdown Blues
Billy Kenrick

Images taken at the outset of the pandemic, while observing restrictions in the artist’s hometown, in the Irish midlands. A fragmentary document, created at a moment of global stasis and isolation. The work is a sequence of disintegrating vignettes and 35mm film off-cuts. Created in response to the creatively stifling atmosphere of life under ‘lockdown’.

The project is set in the artist’s hometown, in the Irish midlands, where he went for what was supposed to be a two-week intermission, and ended up staying for two and a half months. These image-fragments are from around May 2020, during the many looped walks made during that time. It was at the early stages of the pandemic — a pervasive low-level fear had set in, and the regular dynamics of daily life slowed to an eerie near-halt. Published in February 2021.

Billy Kenrick is a Dublin-based visual artist. He is interested in analogue techniques & print media – applying a process-led approach to subjective documentary. Specialising in book-making, darkroom, Super 8, and experimental sound.¹