Meet: Philippa Found

Artist Philippa Found graduated with a Graduate Diploma in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts in 2020, straight into the coronavirus pandemic. Wanting to both connect with people and to document this extraordinary time; Philippa set up lockdownlovestories.com where people could anonymously submit stories about their love lives. She then shared them on Instagram, @itscomplicatedstories.

The anonymity of the process allowed people to be incredibly candid and vulnerable in their posts and got to the heart of what Philippa hoped for the project to achieve; to alleviate shame. Of her inspiration, she says, “I thought lockdown is incredibly isolating, but what’s more isolating is shame”.

The project, which quickly became about so much more than lockdown, has now been published by Harper Collins. It’s Complicated: Confessions of Messy Modern Love is a compilation of 250 real-life anonymous submissions about people’s love lives.

She spoke to us about the power of words in art, the growth of the project from a website to a physical book, and her plans for the future.

You graduated from Fine Art Graduate Diploma at Chelsea in 2020. What did you enjoy most about studying?

Art school was my happy place. It’s where I felt most alive, most inspired, most me. The smell of the studios, varnish and fresh paint, the slightly grotty toilets with graffiti on the backs of the cubical doors, the vibe in the studios. I only have to step back into that building and I have 1,000 ideas and the energy and belief to make again. Being immersed in that zone for a year: it was everything.

What was a highlight of your time at Chelsea?

Three things stand out:

• There was the time I blew up 1,000 balloons with my own breath for 12 hours for an endurance performance-sculpture-installation at the Cook House Gallery about new motherhood for our interim show.
• Tuesday mornings Ben Fitton’s Conditions Breakfast seminars - talking about art in a serious, provocative but relaxed environment. I used to walk away from every breakfast with a sketchbook full of new ideas.
• The moment when my tutor, Katrine Hjeke, answered my question of whether I should begin Lockdown Love Stories because I was worried other people might be doing similar things in the world, with, ‘but YOU haven’t done it yet.’ And so, I did.

And here we are!

What drew you to Fine Art?

I always wanted to study fine art but coming from a financially unstable home, I was too scared to do something as risky as go to art school. I was told there was ‘no job called, ‘Artist’. But that haunted me like an ex I couldn’t get over. Fine Art was the one that got away.

Art was always my favourite subject at school. I was always making art from a young age to turn all that teenage angst and energy into something on paper. I loved Tracey Emin, and the Young British Artists were emerging when I was doing my A-Level Art, and those influences were formative.

Most of the time, Fine Art is the only thing that makes me feel sane. It helps me make sense of myself.

I took a circuitous route to get here, but it’s all helped and is evident in my practice at the end: I did my art foundation at Middlesex in 2002 and then went to Warwick University to study History of Art. For 16 years I was desperate to go back to art school to study Fine Art. But I couldn’t afford it. I graduated and worked in the art world, I became a Director at a commercial art gallery, and I specialised in representing women’s art (which was unique at the time). But the art world can be toxic, and it almost killed my ability to be around art, I certainly didn’t have any time to make anything.

After 8 years, I went back to university but to do a Creative Writing Masters at the University of East Anglia. After that I was planning to start my Fine Art Grad Dip at Chelsea, but I found out I was pregnant and had a baby. I finally came to do the Fine Art Grad Dip at Chelsea in 2019: the fated degree-show year of 2020. But for me it worked out.

What inspires you?

Popular culture, walking around London - seeing shop window displays, the energy and the way people visually communicate - even though so much of my art is text based and not aesthetic at all - seeing it feeds me. Film, other women artists, art about the body, reading a really delicious combination of words, descriptions of make-up, the tactile quality of Lush bath products, artwork that combines art and writing, my love life, break-ups, autobiography. Things I’m not over - that’s generally what becomes my art.

In 2020, during the first Covid-19 lockdown, you started sharing anonymous confessions of messy modern love on Instagram via your channel, @itscomplicatedstories. Why did you start this project?

When lockdown was announced, it was such a unique and strange time, like everyone else I thought this must be documented. I had just got away from using language in my art but when the pandemic happened, I thought, right now there is nothing more urgent or vital than words to connect people; I just didn’t think any other medium had the same directness. It was a time where we were having to reconsider how art communicated when the viewer could not be physically present with it – galleries were closed, we were all at home – and words seemed like the only thing that might still cut through the distance. I thought people need connection right now.

The day lockdown was announced I said, “There will be a divorce spike and a baby boom”. I thought the shift that would happen to relationships would be monumental. I read that Google searches for ‘Why am I dreaming of my ex?’ had increased by 2,460% in the four weeks following the UK lockdown measures being announced. Something was clearly collectively happening. But I wondered how, or if, it would be recorded in the future in literature, film and television. Would there one day be a phase in all books and TV shows where dating paused, where everyone was standing two metres apart, where no one could touch? Or would it be glossed over like it never happened? I wanted to tell that story and create this collective portrait.

But, more than that, I wanted to do something to alleviate the subsidiary shame of all the heartbreak, loss and loneliness people might be experiencing. I thought lockdown is incredibly isolating, but what’s more isolating is shame. During lockdown we’re going to be spending more time online, stuck in the continual scroll of social media and #couplegoals, comparing our private reality to the curated highlights that people feel comfortably posting on social media - which will only amplify people’s privately held shame. It felt vital to create a platform for sharing something more real.

So, I built the website: lockdownlovestories.com where people could anonymously submit their stories of what was going on in their love lives: whether they were single, dating, thinking about an ex, in a long term relationship, breaking up. The anonymity of the submissions process allowed people to be candid and vulnerable and I hoped that by giving people access to reading other people’s confessions, it would reveal to people how common these feelings and experiences were, to show people that they weren’t alone, others felt the same way and knowing that would alleviate the shame they need not carry.

Pretty quickly lockdown stopped being mentioning in the stories at all. What became apparent was what people connected to the universal emotions underpinning the stories: the longing for exes, the disappointment at another ghosting, the thrill of connection. The happy stories gave people hope: if it happened to them it can happen to me, and the darker stories provided reassurance: it’s not just me. Submitters and followers of the project were so generous with their positive feedback – whether it was seeing their stories help others or recognising themselves in others’ words – it inspired me to keep going and platforming the stories in bigger ways to spread their reach.

People connected with the stories because they were so relatable and that became the glue of the project – not lockdown – but the raw, honest confessions from real people.

The response has been amazing, and it’s now being turned into a book, It’s Complicated: Confessions of Messy Modern Love. How does it feel to have your art project published?

It’s the dream. I have always been interested in making art that crosses media, and that’s what I have always believed was the potential with this project. So, to make a book – from a website – that was an artwork – that has been exhibited as large scale vinyl on shop fronts, and LED text on the underground, is very exciting to me. The project works across multiple forms and that just expands the audiences it can reach.

With this project, I wanted to show people that their stories were important, whoever they were. I used to work in the artworld – I had a gallery – and for too long the art that we’ve seen on the walls, and the stories that have been told in books, come from a certain, very narrow demographic.

I’ve always strived to expand the art that we see so it is more truly representative and create projects that are inclusive. It’s why I went chalking for submissions in parks and platformed the stories on the high street and public transport –these are democratic spaces: accessed by all ages, races, genders, sexualities, classes. I wanted to gather and reach as wide a demographic as I could - not just people who feel comfortable walking into an art gallery or who already felt seen in the stories that have been told in literature. Our systems of representation are still exclusive structures, and I wanted to subvert that.

To have gathered enough powerful stories from such a range of backgrounds and voices – from teenagers to octogenarians, from London to Melbourne, articulating all different forms of love; and then get those stories as a collective inserted into the cultural mainstream in the traditional form of a book, which has such authority and creditability, cements their importance in culture. I think that’s how, as a curator, you can work within existing structures to expand them.

What’s next for you?

I have just launched the new platform to continue to gather and publish the stories out of lockdown: its-complicated.com

So, if anyone reading has a story to share, whether you’re single, dating, going through a break up, thinking about an ex – whatever the situation, so long as it’s real and your own experience – you can submit at the link above.

The premise and intentions of the project remain the same: The more nuanced and honest accounts we have access to, the more inclusive and realistic our understanding of love and relationships becomes, and the cycle of shame is reversed. The wider the stories can be platformed, the more people they reach, and the further the benefits spread.

These stories are so translatable and powerful, I want to continue to adapt them and platform them in different forms – theatre, fashion, unexpected public interjections, billboards. If there are stories to be told that benefit others, I want to find innovative ways to share them. I love collaborating with people in different industries and if other UAL alumni have appropriate platforms for this, I’d love to hear from them.

It's Complicated:  Collected Confessions of  Messy Modern Love is out now.

Connect with Philippa:

• Submit your story to the project: its-complicated.com
• Read the 1,500 stories in the  Lockdown Love Stories archive: lockdownlovestories.com
• Follow the project on Instagram: @itscomplicatedstories
• Find out about Philippa's other work: philippa-found.com