Hundred Years Gallery is proud to host the first solo show by UK-based artist Carlie Simpkin. The Mechanics of Depression features 10 works by the artist, and this exhibition proudly supports the charity Rethink Mental Illness, with public donations boxes onsite.
Carlie Simpkin recently graduated from the University For The Creative Arts, in Farnham. She now works at her home studio in the South East. She feels it is time to open this work to the public, piecing together a carefully selected portfolio in The Mechanics of Depression. These particular pieces reflect upon the complex nature of the illness; the feelings of hopelessness, the fatigue, the emptiness, the isolation and the silence. By directly involving the symptoms of depression within the work, the show offers an honest and meaningful look at how depression functions and the devastating impact that it causes.
For the past 7 years, Carlie Simpkin has been trying to make the illness a tangible thing throughout her work, to make it more comprehendible and open to discussion and thought. She started making work about mental illness and putting depression into a visual form when she was in secondary school, and it has been the obsessive aim of her practise ever since.
The Mechanics of Depression offers an environment where people can feel more comfortable talking and thinking about these issues, as depression is perfectly normal and something that nobody deserves to be ashamed of.
Private view Thursday 3rd of November 6.30 to 9.30 as part of Whitechapel Gallery First Thursdays
Carlie Simpkin is interested in depression as a subject. She builds a visual language through various forms with her knowledge of the illness. Photography, text-based images, readymade objects and sound are often amalgamated to form the work. The work tends to juxtapose deep sadness, and coping mechanisms such as humour or satire in such a way that the work could be seen as a tragic comedy. In some of her work she tries to simulate the feeling of depression as accurately as possible, in others she creates metaphors which get to the core symptoms of the illness and open up a wider discussion about mental health.
Simpkin is fascinated with the ‘invisible’ nature of psychological pain, and is fuelled by a desire to make these issues somehow easier to comprehend. For any patient, the capacity for language can easily be destroyed when in pain, and oftentimes physical and mental wounds are left untreated or even undiagnosed due to the language barrier of illness. Simpkin attempts to express the invisible through objects, symbols and sound that many will recognise and relate to.
Recently, she has been combining readymade objects in a sculptural form to bring physicality to the unseen; to promote understanding and to express a need for parity between diagnostic methods and funding for physical and mental illnesses.
