Mad Pride 2011: REdisCover

MAD PRIDE 2011: REdisCover

A month-long investigation into modes of recovery sanity!

Gallery Gachet Collective and Volunteer Members present a group exhibition and an exciting month of programming featuring work addressing mental health, art and healing, human rights and psychiatry.
Exhibition runs: July 8th – 31st
Fri July 8th: 6 – 8pm, Opening Un-reception
8 – 10pm, Stand Up for Mental Health Comedy
Thurs July 14th: 8pm – late, Mad Poets’ Anti-Cabaret sponsored by the West Coast Mental Health Network
Fri July 22nd: 7 – 10pm, Stand Up for Mental Health Comedy
Sat July 23rd: 2 – 4pm, RE: Beauty, workshop with Isabella Mori

In celebration of International Mad Pride Day on July 14th, Gallery Gachet continues its annual tradition of honouring this historic but little-known social change movement founded by psychiatric activists in the 1970s by presenting an art exhibit, interdisciplinary cabaret, comedy nights and a workshop. As an arts collective whose mandate advances art and healing as a path to social and economic justice, Gallery Gachet embraces Mad Pride as a unique vantage point from which to address current issues in an alternative framework: that of cultural and global mental health.

This year’s programming theme embraces and jostles with ideas around “modes of recovery”. The gallery is facing major financial cut backs this year and with practically no money to run programming, we are responding in our usual mad and crazy way – with a non-exhibit, anti-cabaret and comedy for our Mad Pride celebrations. We are defying the usual parameters and breaking new ground in the face of “zero dollars.”

Recovery narratives are ways of creating new stories and modes of being, pulling other narratives and ideas into one’s own autobiography. Such a changing narrative becomes a palimpsest, layered over and over again throughout one’s life. Recovery is also self-discovery: starting from a place of honesty, it is a way of re-thinking the ways in which one lives and one’s way of being in the world. Consciously re-situating the self in relation to the ‘world as it is’ is a significant achievement: a brave stance of resisting the alienation and despair that seems to define modern life.

What does recovery mean in the case of chronic mental illness, persistent disability, and in cases when the recovery narrative is re-written again and again throughout one’s life? Furthermore, what does recovery mean in the context of financial instability and the crises of global, exploitative capitalism?

Recovery is a process of finding oneself after a crisis, a personal and/or external, a response to extreme events and situations. Gallery Gachet Collective and Volunteer members will be responding to their own personal challenges and barriers in light of financial instability and insecurity that the gallery as a whole is facing. Mental health funding continues to be a prominent issue, not only locally, but globally. With no money and little support, how is one supposed to fully recover and maintain good mental health?

Using social media tools, visual art, a community wall, a photo montage, and odd-ball stations around the gallery for dialogue to be created, the gallery will transform into a probing and open discussion forum for people to talk about the change catalysts we face that can cause us to transform in a positive way, rather than succumb to crisis. We aim to create what theorist Hakim Bey calls a “Temporary Autonomous Zone” facing these issues head-on.

Our objective is to reach out to the global mental health community, especially in B.C. In a quest to gain support, we’ll call out to people to face their own mental health and give us a photo of themselves in their support of our Mad Pride initiative. We activate this Face Your Mind photo campaign during the month of July and create a photo gallery on one wall that will grow during the duration of the exhibit. Send us your image and permission to be included to, programming@gachet.org.

Through art, performance, music and educational events throughout the month of July, Gallery Gachet aims to create a safe and radical (literal meaning: “root”) space for a total creative and exploratory FREAK OUT over our need for funding and financial stability. Join us for an exploratory month of programming!

The objectives of this month-long group show include:

* Challenge stigmas of people living with mental health issues.
* Provide a forum for discussion and education on these issues.
* Contribute to dialogue on mental health human rights through the sharing and showcasing of artistic expression on these themes.
* Celebrate the rich contributions of artists in our community, and their right to self-expression and health.

With support from the West Coast Mental Health Network (WCMHN) and the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA).

Media requests: Lara Fitzgerald, programming@gachet.org, t: 604 687 2468.

To see pictures from this exhibition, please visit our Flickr account https://www.flickr.com/photos/gallerygachet/sets/72157627637583417