Mental Health and Art as Therapy - an interview with Stuart Semple

Mental Health and Art as Therapy - an interview with Stuart Semple

06 September, 2011
by: Tom Jeffreys

Artist Stuart Semple talks to Tom Jeffreys about his personal experiences with mental health problems and his new exhibition for Mind.

With the recent opening of Museum of Everything 4 at Selfridges and the transformation of Hauser and Wirth into the 'Piccadilly Community Centre' over the summer, interest in the therapeutic power of the arts is high in the public consciousness. So it's clearly a pretty good time for mental health charity Mind to launch their new creative therapies fund.

Instigated by contemporary artist and Mind ambassador, Stuart Semple, the fund aims to enable those experiencing mental health problems to explore the benefits of self-expression through creativity – particularly those who may not have the opportunity or resources to do so otherwise.

Stuart himself – best known for bold Pop Art paintings, projects like the awesome Happy Clouds, and as founder of the Aubin Gallery on Redchurch Street – has experienced the therapeutic effects of creativity first-hand. It was after a near-death experience at the age of 19 that he threw himself into the creation of art.

As he tells me during a visit to his spacious (and very tidy) studio in Camberwell, “one day when I was about 19 I had a really bad allergic reaction and didn't know what to. I was all swollen up and really in a bad way and got taken to hospital. They did the usual thing with drugs but the swelling wasn't going down and they couldn't work out what had caused it.”

After being injected with special blood plasma in the hope of curing him, Stuart actually died for a few seconds. But fortunately he came round and started to get better. To this day nobody seems to know what caused it.



Unsurprisingly this experience was a traumatic one. As Stuart says candidly: “I was left with this strange sense of questioning – what happened, what can I eat, what can I not eat – and nobody could really give me any answers. They gave me a list of things I could have – even though they didn't know what had caused it – and there were about 50 different things on it. I left there being terrified of putting anything in my mouth – even drinking water. So in one way I guess I had an eating disorder, but also I was just incredibly anxious about anything and everything.”

The various solutions put forward – drugs, coping with fear group sessions – were ineffective, and it was then that art came to the fore. “I started drawing – ferociously at that time – and I started putting them up on eBay. Through that I realised that people could identify with what I was making and it was a way to explain what I was going through. Of all things we tried – and they did eventually point me to a psychologist – it was actually my art that was there for me and helped me through it all.”

Stuart's personal experiences with art as therapy therefore lie at the heart of this new creative therapies fund. After doing another eBay in auction in 2009 (with proceeds going to Mind) the idea of something more in-depth came up: “I wanted to do something long-term, and specifically relating to arts therapies, because they're really beneficial but they're so under-funded – the NHS doesn't really stretch to it, and it doesn't have the support it needs. Research has been done, but it's one of these things that's not quantitative: you can't really measure it and the results are often anecdotal. But it really works.”

The fund is launching this September with a fund-raising gala dinner (hosted by Mind president Stephen Fry, no less) as well as an exhibition, entitled Mindful, and series of events taking place in the atmospheric Old Vic Tunnels under Waterloo Station. On show are works by some of the biggest names in contemporary art – like Tracey Emin, the Chapman Brothers and Mat Collishaw – as well as some of Spoonfed's own favourites, like Liliane Lijn, Tessa Farmer and Sebastian Horsley, who tragically died last year.



Stuart selected the artists in two ways: either because of the cathartic nature of producing work to an artist with their own mental health issues; or because of the way the work itself “takes you to a place that's cathartic place for you as a viewer” – as is the case with Horsley, whose paintings Stuart describes with great tenderness and will be exhibited alongside the Sarah Lucas documentary of his crucifixion.

And just as the art therapies to be offered by Mind's new fund span not just painting and drawing but also drama, spoken word and dance, so Mindful includes immersive theatre, a day of live music, film screenings and comedy. “I never thought of the show as just an exhibition of static objects, Stuart explains. “I always wanted to bring a performance element in.”

As well as raising money for arts therapies treatment across the UK, Mindful is also about more than that. “Apparently one in four of us will have a mental health issue in any give year,” Stuart tells me, “so it's common – really, really common.” He cites high-profile sufferers of mental health problems, like Stephen Fry, Melvyn Bragg and Ruby Wax: “They've done well and everyone loves them, but also they've suffered, and despite all they've said and done there's still this stigma attached to talking about mental health.”

Hopefully Mindful will go some way towards changing this. As Stuart says in closing: “My hope is that people come and realise that it's OK to talk about mental health. I hope it educates and starts a dialogue really. And some money for the fund would be good too.”

Mindful is at the Old Vic Tunnels from 22nd to 27th September 2011.

Read Tom's interview with Sebastian Horsley, May 2010.
Read Jess' interview with Tessa Farmer, January 2011.
Read Stuart Semple on brand collaboration, April 2011.

Click here to see all London exhibitions.
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Return to Spoonfed's London Art homepage.

Image credits: Old Vic Tunnels, Stuart Semple, Seana Gavin, Sebastian Horsley.
www.mind.org.uk

Tom Jeffreys