Reassembling the Self curated by Susan Aldworth

Artworks by Susan Aldworth as well as Camille Ormston and Kevin Mitchinson, two skilled artists with a schizophrenia diagnosis. To think of schizophrenia as a fragmented mind and then to focus on isolated fragments the altered visual perceptions, heard voices, paranoid delusions is to miss the whole experience. All of the work is at heart about human identity, the sense of self and how it holds itself together. Professor Anya Hurlbert, Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University Reassembling the Self is an exhibition entred on a study of the condition of schizophrenia, which weaves together art, science, psychiatry and individual histories in an extraordinary exploration of self, perception and the fragility of human identity. As artist in residence from 2010 to 2012 at the Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University, Aldworth took schizophrenia as her theme, building on collaborations with neuroscientists, psychiatrists and patients to produce a series of remarkable lithographs that challenge the sense of identity through their dislocated imagery. These are dramatic, powerful works which locate an essential human experience in schizophrenia.

Together with her film based on a seminal text about schizophrenia, Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness Aldworth’s work also stands in a suggestive dialogue with other works in the exhibition. There are paintings and drawings by Camille Ormston and Kevin Mitchinson, two skilled artists with a schizophrenia diagnosis

A series of events is being organised during the exhibition to raise awareness, to promote research into new treatments of schizophrenia and to celebrate World Mental Health Day on 10 October 2014 which, this year, takes living with schizophrenia as its theme. There is a full catalogue available.

Private View : 16 September, 6pm – 9pm

Exhibition runs from 16 September until 11 October 2014