Group Therapy: Mental Distress in a Digital Age
Behind Your Eyes, Between Your Ears (2015) by George Khut. Photo by Silversalt.
Positive Reinforcement (2013) by the Institute for New Feeling. Photo by Silversalt.
Exhibiting Artists:
Katriona Beales | Richard Bell | Dora García | Institute for New Feeling | George Khut | Gretta Louw | Melanie Manchot | Miyarrka Media | Lauren Moffatt | Jennifer Kanary Nikolov(a) | Kate Owens and Neeta Madahar | Erica Scourti | Superflex | Bonney Djuric, Lily Hibberd and Jenny McNally, members of the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Memory Project
The Group Therapy exhibition offered artworks, design objects and research exploring connections between mental health and the values, political conditions, and technologies that structure our lives. Its impact in the UK was so significant that it was recommissioned for the inaugural Big Anxiety Festival in Sydney, Australia in 2017. I expanded the exhibition to include local and Indigenous perspectives from artists such as Richard Bell, Miyarrka Media and members of the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Memory Project.
The exhibition included the augmented reality wearable Labyrinth Psychotica, which stimulates the subjective experience of being in psychosis, funded by the Mondriaan Foundation.
“An outstanding contemporary art exhibition“
– Anna Davis, Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (PhD examiner)
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Group Therapy welcome text. -
Contextulaizing apps and digital materials including Avatar as Prosthesis (2017) by Gretta Louw. -
Electroconvulsive Therapy Machine (Circa. 1960) and partial view of The Public Secret (2017) by Bonney Djuric, Lily Hibberd and Jenny McNally. -
Labyrinth Psychotica wearable (2013) by Jennifer Kanary Nikolov(a). -
Warwuyun (Worry) (2017) by Miyarrka Media. -
Not Eye (2013) by Lauren Moffatt. -
Scratch an Aussie 2008 by Richard Bell. -
Empathy Deck 2016-2017 by Erica Scourti pictured alongside Warwuyun (Worry) 2017 by Miyarrka Media. In Group Therapy curated by Vanessa Bartlett -
Warwuyun (Worry) (2017) by Miyarrka Media pictured alongside White Matter (2015) by Katriona Beales.
Images from Group Therapy 2017. Photographs by Silversalt.
Vanessa Bartlett interview with The Big Anxiety, 2017
Collaborators: Exhibition design by Benjamin Koslowski. Thanks to Dara Gill and Veronica Habib
Funders: The Mondriaan Foundation, UNSW Galleries and The Big Anxiety
Link: to University of New South Wales Galleries exhibition page
Related projects:
Group Therapy: Mental Distress in a Digital Age [A User Guide]
I live and work on Bidjigal and Gadigal land. I pay my respects to custodians past, present and emerging by revering the land and paying the rent. Always was, always will be.