Images Of Aradale

A friend once said to me many years ago “It’s a pain in the backside when you are driven to do something that’s not economically viable”.  By which he meant - art.  But then, perhaps it depends on what type of art practice we are talking about.

When I was at art school in the 1990’s, I was made aware of an exhibition called the Cunningham Dax collection of psychiatric art that was on show at the Victorian Artists Society in East Melbourne.  Talk about art on the edge!!  Years earlier, the head of the mental health authority in this state, Eric Cunningham-Dax, had rescued from the dumpmaster hundreds of drawings and paintings produced by patients of psychiatric hospitals.  They are now on permanent display at the Dax Centre, Melbourne University.  The last time I saw the exhibition, it had been sanitized compared to what I saw years before.  That is, not half as confronting.

Evening At Aradale, 2007 oil on canvas, 80 x 106 cm

The whole issue of mental illness, of an existence outside the mainstream, has long fascinated me.  Not to mention the history of mental illness in my family.  (Given recent events, I would imagine the prevalence of mental illness has skyrocketed generally.)  In the early 1990’s I attended an open day at the Willsmere Psychiatric Hospital in Kew just after the last patients had been removed.  Unforgivably, I left my camera home.  I didn’t make the same mistake when I visited the former Aradale facility in Ararat in western Victoria a few years later.

View From The Tower, Aradale, 2021, oil on canvas, 84 x 84 cm (available for sale on the Bluethumb website)

Aradale certainly attracted its fair share of adverse publicity over the years, largely due to underfunding by increasingly stingy governments.  It was opened for business in the late 1860’s and in its heyday was surrounded by 100 acres of land.  The facility raised its own cattle, sheep and poultry, did its own slaughtering, grew fruit and vegetables and thus was largely self-supporting.  Coal for the furnaces was about the only thing that needed to be brought in, apart from patients of course.  The facility also had its own tailors producing uniforms, a chapel and a morgue.

Winter At Aradale, 2021, oil on canvas, 66 x 86 cm (available for sale on the Bluethumb website)

Whilst facilities such as Aradale courted controversy from time to time, there is no doubt that “asylum” means refuge and sanctuary and many of the former patients would stand little chance of surviving in the outside world.  The notion of “least restrictive environment” governs mental health policy these days, thus we have the reality of “sidewalk psychotics” as the Americans call them. 

I held an exhibition of paintings based on Aradale at the  Ararat Gallery in 2004.  One of the gallery staff told me she drove past the entrance to Aradale the morning after it had closed in 1993 and saw what she believed to have been former patients gathering at the gates.  They may have been crazy, but they weren’t stupid.

Aradale Evening, 2022, oil on canvas, 71 x 86 cm (available for sale on the Bluethumb website)

Some year ago I got fully involved in exploring ‘issues’ in my art and was producing rubbish more often than not.  So while the issue of deinstitutionalization still lingers in the back of my mind, (as I see it as a symptom of a less caring society), I’ve learned to focus on the art.  Perhaps it’s better to cajole someone to a particular point of view rather than browbeating them.

Hello, my name is Geoff. You may be interested to know that I’m a fulltime artist these days and regularly exhibit my work in Victoria, but particularly in Melbourne. You may wish to check out my work using the following link; https://geoffharrisonarts.com

Glimpses Of Another World

With my upcoming exhibition at Tacit Galleries in Collingwood, I am returning to an earlier theme in my art practice, that of institutional environments.  The contrast between internal and external light is crucial in this work.  But also, there is the theme of mental incarceration.  The mind can play cruel games with us, imprisoning us with our own thoughts and inner turmoil.  Locked away in our preoccupations, our loneliness, there is a world out there that we sometimes feel unable to engage with.

View From The Attic, oil on canvas, 77 x 71 cm

The windows in these scenes could be computer screens in our so-called “connected” age.  Or they could be transparencies through which we view the world, made semi opaque by our preoccupations and inner turmoil.  But, as Olivia Laing discusses in her book “The Lonely City”, windows can be analogous to eyes.  Thus a sense of being walled off from the world is combined, even exacerbated by a sense of almost unbearable exposure.

Inside The Tower, Willsmere, oil on canvas, 76 x 61 cm

The theme of institutional environments in my art practice dates back to the 1990’s when I was studying art at RMIT University.  Contributing factors to this theme include;

• A history of depression in my family

• Having a half-brother who worked as a publications officer with the Mental Health Authority in the 1970’s & 80’s. He once drove me around the grounds of Willsmere Psychiatric Hospital in Kew. I can recall thinking to myself that if I was mad, I wouldn’t mind spending some time in this place – but of course, I never went inside. Not until the facility was closed which brings me to…

• Attending an open day at Willsmere in the early 1990’s, just after the facility had closed. I can remember it being an overcast drizzly day which set the scene perfectly

• The series “Jonathan Miller’s Madness” which was screened on ABC TV whilst I was studying at RMIT, which discussed the history and treatment of mental illness

• Witnessing the performance piece “Going Bye Byes” where British artist Stephen Taylor Woodrow converted a gallery space in Fitzroy into a hospital ward. This was part of the 1993 Melbourne International Festival

• Working in the state government offices in Treasury Place in buildings of a similar vintage to Willsmere and witnessing these offices being emptied of staff during the Kennett Government era

• Visiting the Cunningham-Dax collection of psychiatric art at the Victorian Artists Society whilst studying at RMIT

• Seeing the closure of psychiatric institutions as a symptom of a less caring society

• Arranging an inspection of the former Aradale Psychiatric facility in Ararat in western Victoria in 1998. Just me, the caretaker and this vast empty complex which is almost identical to Willsmere

Some of these dot points fall under the heading of political influences, but I have to remind myself that I am not necessarily painting “causes”. Instead, I am focusing on states of mind, although those states can be at least partially governed by external factors.

Consulting Rooms, oil on canvas, 42 x 61 cm

The concept of an existence outside the mainstream has always intrigued me, hardly surprising given my somewhat dysfunctional background.  For many years I tried to live a “mainstream” existence and failed.  My art practice gives me the opportunity to explore the “non-mainstream” as well as investigating the psychology of space as a metaphor for states of mind.  Perhaps there is a longing for human company in these works.  Then again, the concept of asylum also means sanctuary, refuge – that is, a safe place to be.

German psychiatrist Freda Fromm-Reichmann was one of the pioneers in the study of loneliness.  Her writings on the subject include, “Loneliness in its quintessential form is of a nature that is incommunicable by the one who suffers it.  Nor, unlike other non-communicable emotional experiences can it be shared via empathy.  It may well be that the second person’s empathic abilities are obstructed by the anxiety producing quality of the mere emanations of the first person’s loneliness.”

Art can play an important role in providing an avenue for artists to express their loneliness, their psychological pain in a creative, non-confrontational way.

Domestic Bliss, oil on canvas, 76 x 56 cm

I was tempted to title this exhibition “Lost Connections”, borrowed from the title of a book written by Johann Hari in which he discusses the causes of depression and some surprising cures.  But as Olivia Laing explains, loneliness can be the catalyst for creativity, for seeing the world with remarkable clarity.

The dynamic between sanctuary and confinement, beauty and loneliness often informs my work.  The source material may be a photograph I took a few weeks ago, or many years ago.  Light is used to create a sense of beauty or quiet contemplation in a scene that some may find disturbing.

“Glimpses Of Another World”, opens at Tacit Galleries, 191-193 Johnson St. Collingwood on 23rd March 2022.

References;

“The Lonely City” by Olivia Liang

“Lost Connections” by Johann Hari