Mad Pride: Develop Madness

Exhibitions run: June 19th–July 31st, 2015
Opening reception: Fri, June 19th, 2015, 7–10pm

Mad Pride: Develop Madness | Curated by Karen Ward

Gallery Gachet’s 2015 Mad Pride exhibition, Develop Madness, signifies the transformation of anarchic, organic, and historicized urban space into commodity. Gentrification is the development process experienced in Gachet’s neighbourhood, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. We are located on unceded Native land and the site of successive displacements throughout the 20th century. After years of being derided as a “ghetto” of the poor, addicted, and mentally ill, it’s now become valuable land and a development site. The community is being evicted, priced out, reinstitutionalized, and disappeared.

This year the Mad Pride exhibition showcases work by ten artists who live with mental illness addressing the direct or indirect effects of psychiatric control and the pressures of development in everyday life.

Mad Pride Cabaret | Saturday, July 11th 2015, 7 -10.30pm

Amidst the backdrop of the Mad Pride: Develop Madness art show, we are harnessing amazing feats of madness in an evening of performances for a Mad Pride Cabaret taking place on Saturday, July 11th 2015, 7 ­ 10:30pm (part of International Mad Pride). This multifaceted, fun-time extravaganza will feature an evening of dancing and performers who are proud to be called crazy; DJs, poets, visionaries, singers, strummers and hummers with something to get off their chests and who celebrate our human neuro­diversity and unparalleled tenacity in the face of persistent barriers.