Anya Austin

Living in crisis has shown us what it means to be isolated and lonely. Worldwide, people isolate from family and friends out of fear of harming those closest to them. Throughout the year, it was difficult to keep track of the days of the week as time mocked us with long days. The loss of time is a concept Anya finds most people experiencing during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is the inspiration behind her piece.

Throughout her lockdown experience, Anya became interested in flowers and how their cycle was the only ordinary aspect to our lives. Cut flowers displayed in a vase is something often displayed in Anya’s family home, through lockdown they became a spirit of hope that life was moving on outside the pandemic. Eventually, the flowers would die and be replaced, it was a routine that worked like clockwork, a routine that became a calendar. The use of flowers in this piece begin as orange roses, which in Victorian floral language symbolize desire and as the flowers decay, they turn red which symbolize bashful shame, communicating the public's efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Anya created three paintings to compliment this idea of time moving past us. The reference from a 3D form Anya made herself include a hand shaped vase and shop bought flowers. Over the course of the flower's lifetime, Anya took images of this sculptural form and used three of the images to show the slow decay of the flowers. The hand sculpture represents a static state of being.

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