Maze: Kings College Advance Choice Commission

I have been commissioned by Kings College London's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience to make work for a new website they are creating around advance choice documents. The website is designed to give information to people with bipolar and other mental illnesses to help them plan ahead for future crises. Read more here: www.advancechoice.org. I am excited to be part of something that puts research into advance choice into action.

I wanted to make a piece that spoke about identity - the loss of it and finding a way back to a sense of who you are.

I created a temporary sculpture, making connections between the trees with string, in the woods at Bethlem Royal Hospital. The sculpture went up and came down in one day. The process of going back and forth between the branches was like living through many recurring days, the lines like well-trodden neural pathways and repetitive thoughts. The tree was a host for the sculpture - there was one central point where the string converged, and lines spread out from here.



Working within the hospital grounds came with some restrictions. The sculpture couldn’t be left unattended, and had to go up and come down in one day. This was a way to protect the patients, as the string was a ligature risk. Time was cut short when it began to rain heavily, so I had to cut the string down quickly.

The title of this piece is Maze, the maze of the disorder and the unnamed sense of threat at the core. The mental health system can be a complex network to move through.

Advance Choice is funded by Kings College London, Wellcome and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). With thanks to Bethlem Gallery who have worked with me on this commission.