Shape Adam Reynolds Exhibition, (year)

Name Of Artwork: “It Feels Like This”

Medium: Sculpture, text

Materials: Brown DWP envelope, handwritten text in black marker pen

Accompanying Text:

It Feels Like This is a process-based artwork using mediums of sculpture and text. Handwritten text is scrawled onto the back of a seemingly ordinary, opened brown envelope, with a return address printed along the edge of the fold. The envelope is taken from the artist’s own archive of correspondences from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Motivated by concepts of public and private space and where the sick and/or disabled body exists within them, Milroy draws upon the experience of such correspondences and how they enter the home, often in both covert and overt ways; invisible to some, terrifyingly obvious to others. The envelope sits as a sculptural foundation to the handwritten text, acting as both a scrap of paper on which lists are scribbled, and physical material embedded with a host of weighted narratives: the violation of the home, the absence of privacy, the pervasive hostility of the state, and the precariousness of depending upon it to live.

It Feels Like This speaks to the ways in which we are often left without words. We continue to experience profound loss, the cost of which feels unceasing. When “normal” is used as a bludgeon to erase, divide, and forget, sitting with our grief becomes powerful. It is in the raw, bruising of heartache that we can action upon hope for things to be better, without ignoring the pain and the loss, and the price that is paid, continuously, along with it.