Life with Art .....
Space Artworks, as a unique organisation who supports artists with mental health challenges, celebrates its first year at the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival with the collaborative exhibition "Life with Art..." - showcasing work from the service users and workshop participants of Outlook Project, SAMH- The HIve and the local artist Sarah Rothman.
Exhibition Dates: 10-31st October 2015
Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival is one of the world's largest festivals with annual attendances of over 20,000. This year’s SMHAFF will see over 300 events staged throughout the country, including film, performing arts, literature, music and visual arts. The Festival takes place from 10th-31st October and aims to support the arts and challenge preconceived ideas about mental health.
Rebels With A Cause- Outlook Project
Outlook Project is an adult education project for people accessing mental health services in Edinburgh for this year's SMHAFF they present the arts project Rebels With A Cause. Rebels With a Cause is a group that meets to learn about, write about and act on personal, social and political issues. The aim of the group is to ensure people have the means to have their voice, opinions and experiences heard. They aim to forge a direct link between personal experiences and public issues, raise awareness of the effects of inequalities, oppression and abuse in society, as well as outlining what could be done to foster change.
Over the past nine months, the six members of the Outlook Project 'Rebels with a cause" group have been exploring a range of topics, and have written and recorded various original pieces to share with others for the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival 2015. There are twelve different poems, stories and songs all included and available for you to listen to at the touch of the button. Using an innovative new medium called a sound-board, the exhibition piece allows you to hear the recordings by pressing different parts of the image. The use of conductive ink that senses touch allows the viewer to interact with the work, ensuring an accessible and inclusive design and piece. Themes include silencing; the lives and experience of carers; abuse; tolerance; benefit cuts; campaigning, and more.
We will be running two workshops during the festival, open to community groups, professionals, and the general public. They will be on Thursday 15th and Thursday 22nd October between 1.30 and 3.30pm at Space Artworks gallery, Morningside. These will give you a chance to meet some of the artists, to discuss the work, and also to take part in some activities that will allow you to create your own work, dealing with issues that matter to you.
SAMH, The Hive
The Hive have provided Space Artworks with a fantastic and fascinating collection of works for SMHAFF's exhibition "Life With Art...".The Hive is an activity centre and coffee bar for in-patients of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital with a full timetable of activities and events.
Work one is named “Angel in Disguise”. This was created in an open art session – the perfect environment to freely create and have positive experiences. The artist has had difficulty with a short attention span, which can make the completing an artwork somewhat challenging. Finishing “Angel in Disguise” was therefore a real accomplishment, and gave her a great sense of achievement.
The second and third works are collages, both completed by the same artist. He likes to work with what he is enthused by and passionate about, which makes his creations ideal for SMHAFF’s theme. Working with printed images is particularly interesting to him, as is creating mixed media pieces. The main subject matter is “Bobby”, but the work also features a more subtle nod to another “passion” - green to symbolise his love of the football team Celtic. “Through the Year” uses images of nature to represent different seasons, speaking to a love many will be able to identify with - the changing rhythms of the natural world.
The cartoon inspired painting “Little Birdy” meanwhile, plays on the love hate relationship between Sylvester and Tweety Pie - a less conventional type of passion perhaps!
The last work featured “City in Mist” is by an artist who prefers to work with stencils – another piece which illustrates the breadth of work created at The Hive. Her inspiration comes from modern urban environments and the city, yet another creative interpretation of the theme “passion”. Whilst the form and content of her work provide an updated twist on traditions of landscape painting and the passion inspired by the sublime, the skyline stencil itself is softened by the colour choice and delicate application of paint, provoking memories of more classical landscapes even as it subverts them.
Read more about SAMH. The Hive activities and the artworks featured in the slideshow above on the Space Artworks blog here.
Sarah Rothman
The works featured on this page will be shown in Space Artworks from the10th to 31st of October. Space Artworks will also have works featured in Summerhall’s exhibition for the festival. For more information please see here