Since the beginning of this year I’ve been working on a project with Museum Dr Guislain, Ghent, Belgium alongside preparations for an international conference Culture and Mental Health (with Iedereen Leest, the Flemish Reading Agency). The exhibition I curated as a response to the themes of the conference: connection, mental health, growing and making, and literature is now open.

Connective Material celebrates multiple ways of collective making: the work reflecting on small stories that connect us to the ways we experience the challenges of everyday life. It includes socially engaged arts projects BindweefselLevensboom (Tree of Life) (2022) Larissa Schepers in collaboration with participants of the project and made with TextielLab at the Textiel Museum, Tilburg, Netherlands - making that symbolises the rich cultural and personal stories of participants; I MISS YOU (2021) Erin Helsen and Valentine Kempynck who worked with families and the organisation DOEK vzw (Antwerp) this digital piece focussing on stitched reflections on loss and grief. Louise Limontas shows work developed during a residency with KAOS vzw, a Brussels-based organisation that develops art projects and residencies in psychiatric settings. her woven Intangibles rencontres (2021) explore encounters and exchanges both verbal and non-verbal both during collaborative workshops at the Sint-Alexius atelier and afterwards. Safety Net (2021) and There is no Health without Mental Health (2019/20) are work by Lynn Setterington developed as part of a project exploring mental health and the construction industry in the UK. They are made with debris netting, and were originally shown in Manchester, installed by local scaffolders. Transition Quilt (2020 ongoing) by Al Hill, Colin Lievens, Eleanor Louise West and Joe Lawn, has been made collaboratively, ‘used, lived in, and added to’ as it has been passed back and forth between makers. The quilt has undergone its own transition, providing love, comfort and solidarity. The Bradford Covid Stitch Journal (2020) Claire Wellesley-Smith and participants is an early response to the first lockdown in the UK and was made between April and July 2020. Participants explored their feelings about the pandemic through stitch and in online conversations.

In addition to these participatory works, individual pieces by Angela Maddock, Shelly Goldsmith and Karina Thompson are included. All three speak to stories of the collective or to mental health. Holding: A Work in Progress (2017-2022) by Angela Maddock is an ongoing series made in response to conversations with nursing and midwifery students at Kings College London on their experiences of holding and containing in the context of clinical practice. Recovery Quilt 3: Out of the Dirt (2019) by Karina Thompson is a reflection on the lived-experience of clinical depression. Lodz Blouse Trilogy (2018) by Shelly Goldsmith explores memory and experience imbued in the clothes we wear whilst paying homage to the photographer Henryk Ross (1910-1991) and his image ‘Children and parents gathered around the table at a children’s party.’ 1942-1944.

Still from I MISS YOU (2021) Erin Helsen and Valentine Kempynck

Big thanks to Bart Marius, Tuur Demaegdt and Yoon Hee Lamot at Museum Dr Guislain for all their support with this project.

Connective Material is on until 30th March 2023 alongside Mirror Mirror: Fashion and the Psyche and Making, Healing, Connecting a project of Soft Connection Lab and the Nomadic School of Arts with students of KASK and Conservatorium School of Arts, Ghent.

More images here