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Alberta College of Art & Design

Issues around mental illness have long been misunderstood and it remains a somewhat taboo subject, despite the fact so many of us are affected by it, directly or indirectly, over the course of our lives. Drawing on personal histories, artists Richard Boulet and Sarah Anne Johnson address topics of mental health, treatment and healing in thematically linked shows at Illingworth Kerr Gallery.

On view is six years of Boulet’s work consisting of some 48 pieces, including those produced while he was earning his MFA at the University of Alberta. Quilted, sculptural wall hangings incorporate bold text in block letters and squares of cross-stitch text that draw you up close to read. The tone varies, from the declarative “SCREAM LIKE A SHOT DEER,” which seems to jump from the wall, to more intimate poetic phrases in tiny letters on cross-stitch appliqués.

A series of mixed media drawings is also included in the exhibit. In comparison to the labour intensive, precise quality of the textile pieces, the drawings are like explosions of colour and energy. All of it is dynamic and frank, as Boulet addresses schizophrenia, disconnection from reality, the experience of homelessness, battles with medications and the impact on relationships.

Boulet experiments with different strategies to create connections and tensions between the form of the works and the ideas he’s engaged with. Striking a kind of balance, he combines the softness of a blanket — a familiar source of comfort and safety — with his less comfortable subject matter. Other works are hard on the eyes, as Boulet experiments with optical effects. Selections of bright colours and printed fabrics are combined with geometric patterns and stripes to create a rhythm and vibration that is hard to focus on. Some works are bound at the edges like a typical quilt, while on others, threads fray from unfinished edges. These unfinished edges convey a sense of fragility and imperfection, and suggest that these issues —and Boulet’s own experiences — can’t be so neatly packaged.

A work called Haldol Ex Voto is a cream-coloured quilted pillow sham with slightly faded shades of pastel pink and green, and lace trim. The word “HALDOL” comes across loudly in black letters, from a sparkly gold-and-red cross-stitch applied to the centre of the sham. Below, a description of the potent antipsychotic drug reads: “a vicious suppressant for the horrors of the soul.” Sleep disturbances are one of a list of potential side-effects caused by Haldol.

Sarah Anne Johnson takes up the story of her grandmother, who was a patient of Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron at a Montreal psychiatric facility in the late 1950s. Her work is informed by details and anecdotes remembered by her mother as well as by newspaper clippings and other documents.

In a program partly funded by the CIA, Johnson’s grandmother, without consent, was subjected to experimental “treatments” intended to erase memory and reprogram the brain. Patients who were diagnosed with a range of problems — anxiety, post-partum depression and schizophrenia among them — received electroconvulsive therapy, were dosed with LSD and endured other procedures that would be considered torture today. The effects were devastating and long-lasting.

Nine lovely bronze figures echo the likeness of Johnson’s grandmother. Their shape calls to mind the Venus of Willendorf, the ancient goddess of fertillity. Each is a slightly different iteration. Rather than hands, tree branches grow from the wrists of one figure. A perfect incision circles the back of another’s head. A large tree-cum-mushroom cloud explodes from the neck of another.

These themes connect to the work on the walls: enlarged family photos altered with paint and graphite. Delusions and hallucinations are pictorialized. In a work titled Birthday Party, a young girl, perhaps the artist, sits at a kitchen table with her grandmother. She leans over what might have been a birthday cake, now replaced by a smouldering pile of sticks. Behind them, leaning in, is a fairytale-esque rodent, life-sized and dressed in a blouse. A pattern of vines and leaves twists around them. Another photographic work depicts a woman, presumably Johnson’s grandmother, with a white cube painted over her head, and white casts on her arms.

Family photographs function as embodiments of memory. By reworking photographs of her family, Johnson creates a gentle metaphor for reprogramming memory, as she re-imagines her grandmother’s story of maltreatment and her life after.