Lisa Watts is an artist who makes art with a liveness, whether that is performance, video, participatory, event, or installation.

Currently, I am applying for funding, for my proposal to research and develop playful “rest structures”, that will be co-designed with my fellow Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, ME and Long Covid sufferers. The aim is for the structures to be situated in foyers, or rest areas of various venues - for all to rest. My title, The Wonderful After, is derived from Ikea’s promotional phrase - The Wonderful Every Day. In the nature of Ikea, my structures would have the capability of being flat packed (almost).

Unlike Ikea, they will ooze opulent swirls and and curls, rather than the clean economical lines of modernity. I want to twist the connotations of the phrase - fatigue - in the context of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome CFS, from which I suffer. This is because, for me, the word fatigue conjures notions of fainting ladies in corsets fragile and feminine. My ideas are influenced by Victorian paintings of Romantic iconographic imagery of women, who have experienced life threatening illnesses, and are painted convalescing on a chaise longue, framed in the beautiful draperies of their dresses - unable to move. In response, I would like to create opulent resting structures made from corrugated cardboard - a ubiquitous material used to protect online shopping which is then circuitously recycled for another journey. On the card structures, Baroque style skies could be painted to imaginatively offset the onerous impact of gravity on the body of a CFS, Long Covid, or ME sufferer.

My resting structures would be made so that they can be slotted together and not glued. Therefore they would be mobile, portable, disassembled and reassembled. Like their components that they are made from - recycled and compostable card, they would leave very little trace.

CFS and ME sufferers are stigmatised due to the invisibility and variability of their illnesses. They are often misunderstood and the namesake - fatigue - doesn’t help. The cardboard is lightweight and yet strong, like the people who live with CFS, ME and Long Covid. These sufferers may not be able to lift much weight, but their willpower is strong.

The designs would be devised from conversations with people from groups in South Yorkshire who meet because they suffer from CFS, Long Covid, or ME. The structures’ designs would play with ideas of wearables considering the Austrian artist Erwin Wurm’s humorous sculptures and performances.

The Wonderful After grew from my illustrated CFS personal journal, which documents how much I could do whilst in convalescence. I no longer could stand at an easel and draw gesturally large drawings, so instead I did quick water colours whilst seated. I hope that these extracts from my journal will become a pamphlet that visitors could flip through whilst resting on one of the structures. Below are samples of some of the paintings and text from my convalescence journal for the possible pamphlet.

Previous experiments with cardboard have been The Geometrically Rude Helmets (2022), by Watts&Dad.

Previous experiments with cardboard have been The Geometrically Rude Helmets which were to be worn in cafes to enable nosiness. Watts & Dad won the Clare Thornton Memorial Artist’s Residency at Looe Street (2022) and the photograph below shows some of their cardboard experiments.

My Crazy Family Golf by Watts&Dad (2021-2025)

 Feedback about My Crazy Family Golf:

"Kids begrudgingly came in, then didn't want to leave!"

"Lovely relationship amongst father and daughter after a struggle. Beautiful piece and fun!"

"Great interactive way of storytelling" "Touching, inventive + multi-layered - a whole lotta love"

"A very interesting, moving and somehow playful exhibition. Thank you - and for the warm welcome."

"So much fun - one of our favourite exhibitions - I loved its interactive nature, the fab audio and the imaginative crazy golf holes."

In 2019, Watts started working with her Dad, as the signature, Watts&Dad. Generally, in Dad and daughter teams, the Dad, is usually passing on his knowledge and, or, business to the daughter, whereas with Watts&Dad, the daughter is facilitating the father to become a contemporary artist in his eighth decade.

In their art making she acts as both a collaborator with, and facilitator of, his ideas. He is a Carpenter and Joiner by trade and has spent a lifetime in the building trade. He has always been interested in inventing and playing games and so when his wife, who was disabled and whom he cared for for forty years, began living in a nursing home, he became freed up to begin exploring his ideas with his daughter.

In 2019, Watts & Dad, funded by ACE hired a studio for fifteen weeks and began to make. Dad insisted on a 7 am start time (builder’s times) in the studio, and they began making a marble run and then restarted with a crazy golf course.

At the end of their three months in the studio, March 2020, the first ‘lock down’ of Covid 19 happened and so they moved the golf art to Dad’s front room in his house, where they continued to build with Watts visiting in the holidays. This second part of the production was commissioned by John Hansard Gallery - Southampton and by May 2021 they had completed a five hole crazy golf course with sound triggers using recordings of Dad and Mum bantering from when Dad had cared for Mum. Mum’s phrases such as “That’s not very good, is it” became triggered sounds when the ball was hit down the wrong hole.

"Lisa Watts is an artist who is totally committed to her practice and actively tests and pushes its boundaries; not afraid to question, to edit and to refine as she thinks necessary.  Her ability to reflect on both her own practice, and that of artists in general has contributed to the publications that she has produced, and those in themselves make a significant contribution to how ‘practice and research’ is perceived and regarded.  Lisa is an important artist, who asks important questions, her work makes us all think and question - and our lives are made all the richer by it" (Carter, Ros, Curator/ Head of Exhibitions, John Hansard Gallery - Southampton, 2019).