About
Artists: Susan Aldworth, Alessandro Altavilla, Sarah Blood, Camille, Kevin
Vane: 20 September 20 October 2012
Hatton Gallery: 20 September 24 November 2012
âReassembling the Self' is an exhibition on two sites, the Hatton Gallery and Vane in Newcastle upon Tyne, curated by artist Susan Aldworth. Centred in a study of the condition of schizophrenia, it weaves together art, science, psychiatry and individual histories in an extraordinary exploration of self, perception and the fragility of human identity.
Aldworth's work, realised in a variety of media including print, film and installations, has long focussed on the relationship between the physical brain and the conscious mind. As artist in residence from 2010-12 at the Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University, she took schizophrenia as her theme, building on collaborations with neuroscientists, psychiatrists and patients to produce a series of remarkable lithographs that challenge the sense of identity through their radically dislocated imagery, emotionally charged colour and mysteriously ephemeral marks. These are dramatic, powerful works in which science, philosophy, physiology and imagination locate an essential human experience in schizophrenia. They immerse us in the fundamental, Sisyphean human activity of reassembling our fragmented selves.
Together with her film based on a seminal text about schizophrenia, Daniel Paul Schreber's Memoirs of My Nervous Illness Aldworth's work also stands in a suggestive dialogue with other works commissioned for the exhibition. There are paintings and drawings by Camille and Kevin, two skilled artists with a schizophrenia diagnosis. At Vane, Alessandro Altavilla's sound installation explores the more beautiful aspects of auditory hallucination. At the Hatton Gallery, artists and scientists have collaborated to create a giant dosage meter which will deliver 192,000 pills a lifetime's supply of anti-psychotic medication over the course of the exhibition, to be recorded with time-lapse photography. In the same gallery, Sarah Blood has produced an exquisite twelve-foot neon angel based on a drawing by Camille: âI see light energy I can see guardian angels', wrote Camille. âEverybody has a guardian angel and sometimes I can see them. I believe it is a gift.'