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February 2013 |
Research clusters, multi-disciplinary partnerships, fusions between disciplines – these are some of the buzzwords around which universities are trying to establish their distinct brands. Not many find it easy to breach the traditional silo mentalities that keep faculties locked into their domains, thinking that the world of the other is far too remote and not worth exploring. But two colleagues at The UWI from two disparate faculties – the Faculty of Medical Sciences and the Faculty of Humanities and Education – have come together in a project that warmly embraces those concepts. And so naturally has it emerged, one wonders why it hasn’t been done before. The outcome of the project between well-known artist, Steve Ouditt, and professor of psychiatry, Gerard Hutchinson is an exhibition called “Proceeds to Mental Health,” which opens at Medulla Art Gallery on March 7 and runs for a month. This collection of Ouditt’s work features the human brain and other cranial derivatives transposed, juxtaposed and imposed on a series of different and sometimes disturbing scenes – “images showing different states of asylum and entrapment,” says Ouditt – that will certainly give pause to the watcher.
The ideas emerged from discussions between psychiatrist and artist – friends since their boyhood days in Diego Martin – sharing thoughts on the human condition and feeling that the society needed to reflect on its mental state of being. “Good mental health is central to the overall wellbeing of the members of every society and one of its major determinants is the relationship people have with the images and spaces that make up their visual environment,” said Professor Hutchinson. “This project is an attempt to address these issues, as they are both taken for granted. Steve and I have had lengthy conversations over the course of our long friendship about how our respective vocations interact, and this exhibition is the first step toward bringing those ideas to a wider public in a tangible way.” Ouditt was equally enthusiastic about the opportunity to release those years of private discussions to an open space. “I am really happy to be doing this project,” he said. “For both of us it’s a small start; using our own resources to generate funds to make positive change in the public understanding of a wide range of mental health issues. Finding design solutions to social problems is the most important issue in design education and practice today. It’s something I have been advocating in my teaching, so this exhibition is an opportunity to show how art/design for social change can work; or fail.” While the cost of the art is being kept fairly low, they are hoping to use the proceeds to enable different approaches to what Ouditt describes as “our wicked problems.” One possibility is to give grants to pairings of “a young artist/designer and a mental health professional/doctor for them to provide solutions to some of the pressing problems of mental health education, spatial design, advocacy, environments, information design, clinics, and so on,” said Ouditt. “The challenges are endless. The idea is to encourage this team to have a wonderful time doing creative, experimental, enjoyable work that attempts to find solutions to our wicked problems; and for us to be strong advocates for applying design and creative thinking to solving social problems.” The show runs from March 7 to April 4 at Medulla Art Gallery on Fitt Street in Woodbrook. The opening is from 7pm to 9pm. By Vaneisa Baksh |
