The Mechanics of Depression

About

Carlie Simpkin is interested in depression as a subject. She collates historical and current documentation of individual experiences of mental illnesses, to build a visual language with this knowledge through various mediums. Photography, text-based images, readymade objects and sound are often amalgamated to form a multi-sensory experience. The work tends to juxtapose deep sadness, and coping mechanisms such as humour or satire in such a way that the work could be seen as a tragic comedy.

Simpkin is fascinated with the ‘invisible’ nature of psychological pain, and is fuelled by a desire to make these issues somehow easier to comprehend. For any patient, the capacity for language can easily be destroyed when in pain, and oftentimes physical and mental wounds are left untreated or even undiagnosed due to the language barrier of illness. Simpkin attempts to express the invisible through objects, symbols and sound that many people recognise and relate to.

Private view Thursday 3rd of November 6.30 to 9.30 as part of the Whitechapel Gallery First Thursdays 

Recently, she has been combining readymade objects in a sculptural form to bring physicality to the unseen; to promote understanding and to express a need for parity between diagnostic methods and funding for physical and mental illnesses.