Last week I had the opportunity to visit an interesting project held in Chealsea, in a sunny room of the Old Town Hall. Held together by the mysterious name of “Hidden Visions”, a display of pictures, paintings, drawings, sculputures dealt with the subtle issue of how the artists involved see, feel, fight and accept their mental illness.
The exhibition was ideated by Elizabeth Vartanian Collier, a smart SOAS student who made an effort to look for funds and to gather the artists in this artistic symposium. I admire her tenacity and patience in setting up the objects in the space given, which was quite limited. She disposed of the art objects grouping the by author, accompanying them with a brief label on each artist. The result was a linear path through different materials and mediums, very interesting already in its own right. The human side of the works was very touching too. All the works, as it appears, bear a substrate of pain, of incredible tension. Nevertheless they sometimes are playful, and many of them left me with an impression of strong vitality. I particularly appreciated the set of pictures which included auto-portaits of the artist Maeve Buckenham. Her works showed an almost surprising introspectiveness. Sometimes she plays with her medium in a way that makes her portrait melt with her surroundings, as in a strive to recreate that sense of fulfillment, of totality, that we all are looking for, in the end. In fact, all the works are in some way a reflection upon ourselves, upon our own illness. Another artist, Bethany Lamont, used paper from a school copybook to write down how she feels about herself and her illness. At first sight you would see a page full of colours, with shiny stickers, pencil drawings – a lively collage that, to a closer look, reveals the state of mind that the artists feels, a state of otherness, of melancholia for a place she has “never been to”. I also appreciated the self-portrait by Miranda Chance, another SOASian, reminiscent of some works by Frida Kahlo, and yet stunning in its stateliness, emphasised also by the position in the exhibition.
I really enjoyed “Hidden Visions” mainly for two reasons: the first is the theme of the exhibition, a delicate issue to address, which I think was carried out in an original way. Looking at artworks made by people will mental illness may remind the visitor that these people suffer, that we know what is sufference and that the stigmatisation they often receive from society, from “normal” people, is mean and unjustified. The second reason is the admiration for how the artists and the curator, all very young, concurred in creating the show. This was something very small and without too many claims for its importance, yet the experience of visiting it was fairly instructive, and I think a good exhibition should always be like that.
The show is now over but I am looking forward for another brilliant idea to be made into practice by lovely Lizzy Vartanian Collier, whom blog you can check in the meantime…
Useful links:
Elizabeth Vartanian Collier’s blog: http://gallerygirl.co/
Photographs of the exibition by Englis Monroe: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.687420438053704.1073741835.455558707906546&type=3
Chelsea Old Town Hall website: http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/venueschelsea/general/
Diotima in the Gallery 