MIQ Food Bag Project: Across

These painted food bags titled 'Across' are part of series of artworks titled MIQ Food Bag Project created by New Zealander Hamish Macaulay while in MIQ (managed isolation and quarantine) during the Covid-19 pandemic.

MIQ is a key part of New Zealand’s border control strategy. International arrivals to New Zealand must stay in managed isolation for 14 days, and be clear of Covid-19 symptoms for at least 72 hours before they can leave (three Covid-19 swab tests are conducted during the 14 days). MIQ is a legal requirement under the Covid-19 Public Health Response (Isolation and Quarantine) Order 2020.

On 31 December 2020, Hamish Macaulay and his partner Jenni Wiggle returned to New Zealand after 14 years in London. They came from winter, and a very restricted way of life where Covid-19 was everywhere. Hamish's story provides insights into how complex life became for self-employed artists and creative people during Covid-19, followed by the complicated process of returning to New Zealand and reintegrating with society.

For Hamish, ‘2020 was going to be my big year’, but the creative sector shut down as countries went into lockdown. Visual artists couldn’t show their work, attend art fairs, or access their studios. However, they could still create at home if they had their materials. The Artist Support Pledge on Instagram became a life-line for artists and kept many afloat, and brought new buyers into the art market (Hamish sold works through this platform on Instagram, with the fastest piece selling in just 15 minutes).

The MIQ experience

When they arrived in Auckland, Hamish and Jenni were bussed to a Hamilton hotel where they were given a large room looking out onto a garden. They had to stay in their room for the whole first day until the negative result of their day 0 test was returned. After that, they could go outside up to three times a day for exercise and fresh air. They had to wear masks and could only be outside at the same time as other people from their plane. They didn’t meet anyone else. ‘A knock on the door with your food’ was exciting and was the ‘highlight of the day’. When meals were delivered by hotel staff, they had to wait until the staff member had left before they could pick up their food from the doorway.

Hamish had brought two suitcases with him, one of which was full of painting materials from two commissions he'd just completed before leaving the UK. He quickly saw the potential of the sturdy brown paper bags in which their meals were delivered three times a day. Six bags a day were quickly accumulating, and he thought ‘they’re not getting recycled’. He began sketching ideas, and started painting on the second day, posting completed work on social media every day.

He painted ‘whatever I felt like and what was going through my mind’. Hamish is a mixed-media abstract landscape artist. Many of the bags feature ‘memory landscapes’ – some real, some imagined. Some of the bags feature geometric patterns including circles created by using the plates and glasses in the hotel room as templates. The artworks started out in light bright colours, but halfway through managed isolation ‘things got a little darker’. That said, painting made the 14 days of managed isolation pass more quickly than expected, although Hamish began to run out of white paint in the early days of isolation. A friend in London told his wife, who told her mother in Hamilton, who kindly dropped off a new tube of white paint, along with ground coffee and Whittaker’s chocolate, to the hotel: ‘the power of social media!’

Hamish's partner Jenni drew the calendar on the overall bag holding the artworks – she documented key milestones of their 14 days in MIQ. On the back of each bag is written their hotel room number and special dietary information, showing the level of care taken by hotel staff in terms of Hamish’s diabetes.

Back to 'normal' life

After managed isolation, Hamish and Jenni were driven back to Auckland domestic airport. It was a shock to see no-one wearing masks and touching everything. Hamish was still ‘carrying the fear that the person next to you might have Covid’. It ‘took a few days to get used to being hugged’. They went to an opening of a brewery which turned into a dance party – it was alarming being so close to people (‘we had got used to holding our breath when people passed by you’). Coming from the restrictions of living in London to the freedoms of New Zealand felt a bit like having PTSD. Subsequently, life has returned to normal for Hamish, and he was able to show the MIQ Food Bag Project in the exhibition Let the Outside In at the Creative Kāpiti PopUp Gallery in Paraparaumu, April-May 2021.