Lullabies In Lockdown was a group illustration exhibition in Sunny Bank Mills in Leeds in October 2022, showcasing the work of several local, national and international artists who became parents during the Covid pandemic.
The show explores how illustration can be used to make topics accessible: to document, share, unite and advocate for those having lived an experience. It intends to uncover quieter or untold stories around navigating parenthood during the pandemic as well as celebrate the tender moments, precious times and lives of the babies who stayed at home.
Featuring work from Nele Anders, Jenna Lee Alldread, Ruth Batham, Pia Bramley, Lizzie Bhushan, Charlotte Dryden-Kelsey, Beth Duggleby, Isabel Greenberg, Jessika Green, Matthew Hodson, Kim Jihyun, Lorna Johnstone, Sabba Khan, Benjamin Mills, Kate Pankhurst, Bryony Pritchard, Alice Socal, Joanna Spicer and Lilly Williams.
Co-curated with Beth Duggelby and supported by Leeds Inspired.
My submission to the exhibition is pictured with the following blurb:
“I gave birth to my first child a week before we went into a national lockdown. He came early – he was due to arrive a month or so into the lockdown. It actually felt lucky that he arrived sooner and not in the height of all the hospital restrictions. At the time, I really remember not being able to distinguish between the ‘normal’ vulnerability of being a new parent or the heightened paranoia of an unknown virus sweeping the world.
I felt in a state of anxiousness (and awe) for the first few weeks, locked away, with a new baby and no visitors, slowly recovering from a very swift emergency c-section, learning how to breastfeed via zoom with the health visitors and the midwives. It felt wonderful, like he was a blessing in amongst the madness, but oh so scary and frightening and… would anything be the same again? What kind of world was this to arrive into?
Having quite a traumatic birth, I was unable to walk or stand for a long time after. Recovery felt much harder than I had ever anticipated. I am an Illustrator and had a yearning to draw through this time and continue with freelance projects, but was unable to use anything other than my iPad, cradling a sleeping baby in one arm and drawing with the other. It seems quite fitting that my drawings are digital – the only medium I could comfortably use at that time.
I drew these in March 2020 with a loose intention for them becoming a zine to document the time, but as the demands of motherhood grew, I hadn’t revisited these, or even looked at them until I read about the call out for this exhibition. I feel that these drawings could sit amongst a wider narrative around what it felt like at that specific time to have a newborn ; for me, a mixture of anxiety and the overwhelming urge to protect.”