My Doubtful Mind
Exhibition catalogue introduction, co-authored with Jan Duffy
18 April - 25 May 2008
Linden Centre for Contemporary Art
Art and anxiety make a happy couple. Fear fuels many an artist’s state of mind. Although making art routinely involves a degree of emotional confusion and terror, the works in this exhibition go further, using these anxieties as their subject matter.
The experience of a panic attack is deeply personal and ultimately visceral, but one of the only ways we can describe it to others is one step removed, through words. Though such descriptions are inevitably ineffective, they are sometimes all we’ve got. As the stories in this catalogue demonstrate, words remain a powerful way to account for anxieties’ effects.
For My Doubtful Mind, the combination of works, and the cumulative effect they produce, bursts out of the Victorian restraint of Linden’s architecture, a presence that unavoidably makes itself known in many of these site specific works.
The initial departure point for this exhibition was phobias. These works testify to the creative potential in this phenomenon: the spectacle of its razor sharp fears, its comedy as much as its tragedy. During the development of this exhibition, we learnt of people who are afraid of adhesive stickers (especially those half peeled off), pillowcases, buttons (especially the black and white ones), cardboard and, yes, bananas. It is hard not to find pleasure in such unlikely pain.
Yet for all the curious humour of such fears, they are very real for those whose lives they occupy. Phobias are inescapable, unrelenting, and require constant vigilance. They can be debilitating. We hope that the works in My Doubtful Mind will provide these effects, and though it is an unusual aspiration for any exhibition, we hope they will make you want to leave.
Exhibition catalogue introduction, co-authored with Jan Duffy
18 April - 25 May 2008
Linden Centre for Contemporary Art
Art and anxiety make a happy couple. Fear fuels many an artist’s state of mind. Although making art routinely involves a degree of emotional confusion and terror, the works in this exhibition go further, using these anxieties as their subject matter.
The experience of a panic attack is deeply personal and ultimately visceral, but one of the only ways we can describe it to others is one step removed, through words. Though such descriptions are inevitably ineffective, they are sometimes all we’ve got. As the stories in this catalogue demonstrate, words remain a powerful way to account for anxieties’ effects.
For My Doubtful Mind, the combination of works, and the cumulative effect they produce, bursts out of the Victorian restraint of Linden’s architecture, a presence that unavoidably makes itself known in many of these site specific works.
The initial departure point for this exhibition was phobias. These works testify to the creative potential in this phenomenon: the spectacle of its razor sharp fears, its comedy as much as its tragedy. During the development of this exhibition, we learnt of people who are afraid of adhesive stickers (especially those half peeled off), pillowcases, buttons (especially the black and white ones), cardboard and, yes, bananas. It is hard not to find pleasure in such unlikely pain.
Yet for all the curious humour of such fears, they are very real for those whose lives they occupy. Phobias are inescapable, unrelenting, and require constant vigilance. They can be debilitating. We hope that the works in My Doubtful Mind will provide these effects, and though it is an unusual aspiration for any exhibition, we hope they will make you want to leave.
