Considering the Norm Part 2 By Simon Kennedy
This spiders web of complexity has not dissuaded a group of artists operating under the banner of ‘Working Title Artists Collective’ from producing a new exhibition: NORM, whereby three very different takes on the theme of normality are presented.
Socially engaged artist Beth Barlow, has continued to build upon a project began in 1996 at Denbigh Mental Hospital. Beth has been revisiting this work through a series of sculptural pieces using found objects and discarded wood in conjuction with a series of paintings. Each individual work collectively forms an installation tailored to a specific space. The work both questions and highlights the repeated and often mundane tasks, we are all subjected to on a daily basis and aligns them with conditions such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and other repetative traits observable in other mental health conditions.
Sticking with the theme of mental health, artist Jason Sheppard (who has himself been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder) looks at the way in which internal or pyschological abnormalities are often so subtle as not to be detected by the world at large. In this instance appearing outwardly normal can be just as debilitating as appearing outwardly abnormal. We rely so heavily on our eyes to make sense of the world, that if something appears to subcribe to what is normal or standard, we automatically assume that it is. Jason’s work presents the viewer with a series of photographic portraits. Male, female, old and young. There would seem to be nothing amiss and if we saw any of these people in the street, we would assume them to be perfectly normal, but we would be mistaken since they all suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. The artist’s aim in this case is to increase awarness of such hidden conditionsand in doing so breaking down the stigma that surrounds them, not least ‘that they don’t exist’. In addition to the photographic portraits, Jason presents a mixed media installation that portrays the way in which the artist see’s his own life…“Not all there and with some parts missing“.
