Andrew Bracey

Andrew Bracey

Fuck Long COVID 25/9/2023-2/11/2023

Pen on Paper

Fuck Long COVID 3/11/2023-12/12/2023

Pen on Paper

Fuck Long COVID 9/1/2024-1/2/2024

Pen on Paper

Fuck Long COVID 2/2/2024-21/2/2024

Pen on Paper

I have had Long COVID for over a year. On the advice of my amazingly supportive doctor, I started to draw for five minutes every day, something I am still doing. I mask out a square in the top half of the paper and then draw multiple straight lines of one colour using a pen on paper, I set my phone alarm for 300 seconds and keep going until it buzzes. At the end of the session, I write the date in the space at the bottom in the colour I drew in that day, which depending upon energy levels occurs at different times. Every day I change the colour of the pen. Slowly the lines link up into a network of triangles, an irregular system that alludes to a chaotic, non-repeating pattern. 

The work takes on an aperiodic appearance through the irregular triangles that refuse to tesselate and form a repeating pattern. The drawing is complete when all the lines are filled I start a new sheet of paper after signing in the bottom right-hand corner. When I started, the five minutes exhausted me, as of today I barely think of it, becoming something else to fit into daily life; some days I do not manage it, or more likely forget to do it. I am glad I still do it though, it is now important to remember what was. A big part of Long COVID is about managing energy. Even now I need to plan my days. The drawing represents some order in the day, I will finish when the fatigue effects of Long Covid have fully gone.

Andrew Bracey is an artist, curator and academic based in Waddington, Lincolnshire. His practice-research explores the slippages between the original/reproduction, artist/curator, painter/painting; and emphasises the importance of looking, attentiveness and materiality in appropriation. He is a Senior Lecturer at The University of Lincoln, where is also undertaking a PhD by Practice. Bracey is co-leading the artistic research project, Bummock: Artists and Archives, with Danica Maier; and working on an (potentially lifelong) curatorial project, Midpointness, with Steve Dutton. Bracey’s solo exhibitions include: Usher Gallery, Lincoln; Nottingham Castle; Manchester Art Gallery; Transition Gallery, London, Wolverhampton Art Gallery and firstsite, Colchester. He has been featured in over 150 group shows; partaken in national and international residencies; presented his research at art and academic conferences; and has curated over 20 exhibitions. His recent solo authored book Enough is Definitely Enough - on contemporary artists’ interpretations of Velázquez's painting Las Meninas - is published by Beam Editions. He is a studio holder at General Practice.

https://www.instagram.com/darthbracey/ 
https://www.general-practice.net/andrew-bracey

James Walton on ‘Fuck Long Covid’ by Andrew Bracey

This piece naturally evokes the mathematical idea of a triangulation. Many are familiar with this idea from 3d graphic, whether in animated films, engineering design or video games. Mathematicians use triangles and their higher dimensional analogues, simplices, as the building blocks of complicated spaces, especially in the field of Topology.

Triangulations remain interesting as flat tilings of the plane, perhaps with added colours as seen in this artwork. In Aperiodic Order we are interested in both discrete point patterns – perhaps the positions of atoms of some aperiodically arranged material – but also in tilings. These are often considered in a unified setting, so it is helpful to be able to construct tilings from point patterns. From a “dot pattern” of discrete points one can construct a so-called Voronoi tiling of convex tiles: for each point in the pattern we have an associated tile of locations closer to that point than any other. Alternatively, there is a dual “Delone triangulation”, a tiling of triangles with vertices at the original points and lines connecting them when their associated Voronoi cells share an edge. This is a useful way of creating a tiling from a point set with triangles that are not too distorted.

Dr James Walton ("Jamie") completed his Master in Mathematics (MMath) at the University of Leicester and continued there, under the supervision of Prof John Hunton, to complete his PhD on topological invariants of aperiodic patterns in 2014. He then held a lectureship and two postdoc research positions between 2014–2020, at the University of York, Durham University and the University of Glasgow. Instead of continuing his UK journey gradually northwards, Jamie then returned to the Midlands, to the University of Nottingham, where he holds the position of Assistant Professor. He has strong interests in mathematical outreach and education, and continues his mathematical research in the field of Aperiodic Order, particularly its study via tools from Algebraic Topology, Dynamical Systems and Diophantine Approximation.