An Exhibition Referred To Mental Health: Joe Richardson ‘Hang On A Minute’
image credit: Nick Jones
“I think creativity is a fantastic outlet for managing my anxiety as it provides me with a focus and often the opportunity to perform meditative acts whilst simultaneously giving voice to feelings that might be difficult to discuss or articulate otherwise. I hope that this exhibition will add a small contribution to the ongoing national conversation of the need for increased resources to help people access support in managing their mental health.”
An emerging artist Joe Richardson is returning to his West Cheshire roots to share his multidisciplinary art practice with residents of Winsford in his latest solo exhibition.
‘Hang on a Minute’, invites people to take a minute or two away from their activities to consider the gestures and motions of the works on display, to wait and idle with the figures and objects in a state of suspended tension.
Joe, whose family hail from Winsford, has created a site-specific exhibition for Cine-Window that references objects and images which many will recognise, such as the Maddock clocks of Winsford; one of which still stands in Wyvern house; the Richardson blacksmiths that used to occupy Delamere Street and archival images of the town.
Joe Richardson ‘Delamere Street’
Joe said “The opportunity to exhibit at Cine-Window Winsford offered me the space to reflect on my family history, not only on their creative practices of blacksmithing and horology, but also the experiences of anxiety I uncovered in my research.
Whilst visiting Winsford to film ‘Maddock’ (below) and having conversations with my relatives to learn more of their creative talents, I began to uncover stories of my anxious ancestors. This led me to consider how they used their creativity to cope with anxiety and reflect upon my own experiences of managing my mental health through creative and physical activity.
I have experienced a mild but very real form of anxiety my entire life. In my early years, this manifested as a fear of going to school, more recently I catastrophise the most ordinary situations such as ‘when will I eat?’ or ‘how will I fit all these tasks into one day?’. These feelings often arise when I’m in the process of making artworks.
I regularly feel frozen in a state where my muscles become tense, my mind is racing and I struggle in making the simplest of decisions. It is as if I have been suspended in time, my body remains still, yet, there is ample energy in the form of adrenaline running through my veins, akin to the static tension present in my balloon and anvil work (below, on the left) the gas pulling the balloon upward and the counteracting weight of the anvil and gravity pulling it back to Earth.
image credit: Nick Jones
I often feel the need to use this energy to perform some form of physical activity in an intense burst that can take the form of a five-kilometer run, sculpting material, or producing a passage of writing. My body often feels tired and exhausted after these moments, but softer and no longer tense. My mind focussed on what I have just been working on, be it covering ground, making a form, or trying to put into words what I’m feeling.
I find it valuable to remain still after these periods of intensity. This time helps me to digest what has just happened, what I have achieved, where I would like to progress to, and most importantly how I feel in both my head and my body. I realise now that this approach has a lot of crossover with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
For a long time, I resisted the idea of speaking to someone about my daily anxieties and managing them. When I finally made the decision to make a call to my local counselling authority, it made a huge difference to my life. Speaking with a counsellor helped me to gain perspective on my patterns of anxiety. By breaking down and analysing the situations in which I feel anxious I am able to examine the root cause or trigger of my anxieties and the subsequent events. This helps me to spot trends and put coping mechanisms into place. This process is very similar to how I evaluate my art practice, deconstructing the nuts and bolts of what makes up the work and evaluating how I can make changes to help improve and develop my ideas and attitudes to managing potential problems.
image credit: Nick Jones
I think creativity is a fantastic outlet for managing my anxiety as it provides me with a focus and often the opportunity to perform meditative acts such as repeating a gesture whilst simultaneously giving voice to thoughts and feelings that might be difficult to articulate otherwise. Combined with my routine of regular exercise, breathing exercises, seeking professional help, or, simply hanging upside down in moments of high tension, this has helped to help me feel grounded and to build a daily and ongoing practice of managing my mental health.”
Cath Campbell of Cine Window said: “It is fantastic to show Joe’s latest work at Cine Window. The work encourages viewers to ‘hang on a minute’ and wait with the work. Richardson’s scenes act as contemporary iterations of archetypal images of Winsford.”
‘Hang on a Minute’ opens on 29 March 2021 and runs throughout April at Cine-Window Winsford.
Joe Richardson has previously undertaken residencies in New York City, Beijing, China, and Stokkøya, Norway. He is a recipient of both the Red Mansion Art Prize and the Cass Art Prize.
In 2020 and 2019, he received commissions from Universal Music Group to create a collection of video works that are on permanent display at their London Headquarters. Richardson is a Central Saint Martins, MA Fine Art Graduate (2018).
This exhibition has been made possible with support from the DCMS Cultural Recovery Fund awarded as part of Cheshire West & Chester Council, Cultural Services.
For more information:www.joerichardson.net