Mad Pride | Mad Honey

Exhibition: June 14th–July 27th, 2019
Opening Reception: Friday, June 14th, 6.00–9.00pm

As part of the international Mad Pride movement, Gallery Gachet celebrates mental diversity and confronts stigma with our annual Mad Pride exhibition. Mad Pride rejects the inference of illness and disorder, reclaiming the term mad. We recognize our “dangerous gifts” by opening creative critical conversations about diagnosis, medication, and psychiatry. We believe there should be “nothing about us without us” and we are here to offer an artistic radical challenge to confining social norms.

2019’s Mad Pride theme is Mad Honey. From our collective hive we puzzle over poison, medicine, madness, sweetness, and intoxication. Mad honey is a form of psychoactive wild honey transformed from the pollen of just a few rare rhododendron species from the Caucasus and Himalayan mountain ranges. It can be a natural remedy or a paralyzing toxin, cause euphoria or confusing hallucinations depending on the dose. We reflect on the meaning of adverse reactions through venom, sweetness and the dangerous gifts of nature.

The exhibition will feature four artists: Jackie Dives, Edzy Edzed, Janice “Jujube” Jacinto and Andrew Scott. Mad Honey will also include a community component collectively-produced through a block printing workshop facilitated by Haisla Collins.