Described by the
artist and activist the vacuum cleaner,
as ‘a desirable and playful space to go mad’, is Madlove, an installation showing as part of the overall exhibition Group Therapy: Mental Distress in a Digital
Age at FACT, Liverpool. Perhaps the most notable aspect of Madlove is its position. It welcomes you
immediately with its colourful, crazy arms, beckoning you as you enter FACT
from the street. Whereas psychiatric hospitals are shut away from society at
large, this is in an open, public space – proud, loud, unabashed, challenging
notions of mental illness as ‘other’.
A makeshift bookcase
painted bubblegum pink with the absurdist title Staircase to Nowhere entices me with its copy of Roger Ballen’s
photobook Asylum of the Birds. I make
my way to the coquettishly entitled Turkish
Delight, a small tent-like structure, whose red-cushioned insides remind me
of the hallucinatory red room in Twin Peaks
and its outside of the cartoonish tent in Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums. The atmosphere is cocooned, almost womb-like
and I look at Ballen’s surreal, primitivist black and white pictures, eerily
aware that this is not the sort of book that would be typically on offer to
psychiatric in-patients.
When I venture out
after that delightful respite, I’m greeted by Weather Station, a series of white, large umbrellas hanging upside down
from the ceiling instantly making me recall the ‘I love to laugh’ scene from Mary Poppins. The soft furnishings and
manic, child-like, almost psychedelic colour scheme might seem at odds with its
desire to present itself as a comforting space to ‘go mad’ and yet Madlove is both zany and soothing.
Although very much a
public project, informed by the artist’s own experience of mental distress and
his stay at psychiatric hospitals, as well as the public – service users,
mental health practitioners, artists etc, Madlove
is not immune from echoes of vast swathes of conceptual art and Pop Art. Abstract
painter Bridget Riley springs to mind, which is particularly interesting given
that her trademark stripes recently have adorned the corridor of St Mary’s
hospital in London. In this way, the art world and health world seem to be
engaging a lot more lately, as if playing a mutually beneficial, unending game
of ping-pong.
It is telling that in
an arts venue renowned for its indelible relationship to technology, I’m drawn
to the most organic artwork on show. The rest of Group Therapy is provocative, almost overwhelming as it successfully
tackles our difficult relationship with the digital and its effect on our
communal mental health. The darkened, enclosed, encased galleries offer the
viewer a dystopia which is disconcerting and challenging. They prey on our
vulnerability reflecting our addictions and discomfiting relationship to
technology.
Finally, I pay a
visit to Cooling Tower, a tall
structure painted in the brightest yellow and orange stripes. The note
accompanying the work urges the viewer to Let
off some steam and scream. In its padded, red, cushioned insides I don’t
feel I need to. I’m suitably lulled.
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