Please believe these days will pass, by artist Mark Titchner, is one element of a poignant public artwork that has been flyposted in cities across the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdown. Intended as an “antidote to the monotony we are all facing”, the work is part of a collaboration with JACKARTS called Your Space Or Mine.

Several months into the crisis, one might wonder whether the passing of these days is going to be relieved by substantial changes in people’s outlook and behaviour — how we might value better some of those things we have, until recently, taken for granted? All still to play for. While Titchner’s project doesn’t seek to answer such questions, in the good agitprop art tradition from which his work, in part, stems, it draws our attention to that which could be said to be pretty obvious, while at the same time a bit uncomfortable—a feeling of desperation, helplessness or ennui... as well as an acute sense of time. In other words, a very Modern project....* And in keeping with this, JACKARTS has made Please believe these days will pass available for download and print—one’s own ‘public art’, so as to remember these days graphically.

In addition to the above links, The Guardian UK Culture Podcast Whitechapel Takeover: Mark Titchner on the Art of Liberty is another good one to check out.

* Interestingly, Please believe these days will pass is something of a repurposed work of art. Created prior to the pandemic, with posts of this work occurring on social media, Titchner redeployed the work in its current, collaborative, guise as a direct response to the crisis.