Trish Morrissey: Self Portrait with Two Snails

Self Portrait with Two Snails (2020) is a video artwork that responds to this strange and difficult time

During the first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, Trish Morrissey’s perception of time changed and she suffered from a ‘crippling combination of anxiety, claustrophobia and fear’. Instead of making new artwork, she began to grow her own food and watch snails in the garden, becoming inspired ‘to live in the moment’.

Trish Morrissey says, ‘I forced myself to breathe deeply. To slow down. To be still. This film, Self Portrait with Two Snails, depicts my full submission, without resistance or friction, to this new dynamic’.

This artwork draws on Morrissey’s previous work, which studies the language of photography through still and moving images. She often uses self-portraiture and performance alongside research into subjects such as history, psychology, philosophy and literary fiction.