On The Cusp, Longlist - Lockdown

Foxes, Love Not Loving You

Rauri Cantelo

The Mill

Rauri Cantelo directs a classical art-inspired lockdown visual for Foxes' return with Love Not Loving You. Featuring layered montages of performance and artwork, Love Not Loving You is bold, buoyant, and unapologetically feminist. Inspired by her own hiatus and journey to empowerment, Foxes - aka Louisa Rose Allen - celebrates the women that came before her, flipping the script on the idea of "a painter and his muse", instead presenting women as beautiful, powerful and in charge of their own narratives. Beautifully executed and presented, the clever editing and painstaking attention to detail hides the fact this was created in lockdown. In reality, Louisa was forced to go completely DIY and shoot the video at home, by herself on her phone, with just her mum and her dog in the room, with Cantelo and the rest of the team watching on video call. "After receiving the track from Louisa and listening on repeat, I began noticing various family members bopping to it around the house and humming the chorus over and over again, revealing to me that despite having deeper more serious tones about past relationships and dark moments in Lou’s life, there was a really strong echo of affirmation, personal development and self care in the lyrics. In short - this track was ultimately a very positive one. One that needed to be accompanied by brightly coloured, fun and somewhat ‘catchy’ visuals that tastefully and respectfully co-existed alongside the underlying message beneath the track. As many creatives have found out during this time, working with very limited ‘ingredients’ due to the lockdown restrictions in the UK at the time really allowed us to push to the very edges of what we would be able to achieve in Louisa’s apartment, exploring projection and lighting techniques to ‘bring the outside in’, and to utilise every inch of her space. Establishing a clear set of tests and design guidelines with [designer] Jo Guthrie meant we were able to show proof of concept very early on. It also meant we were able to outline the ‘do’s and don'ts’ for our collage elements, as we were looking to enhance Louisa’s message not cover it up."