Mental Falls

Mental Falls (2024) is a show encompassing new works including Feel Stupid which has been commissioned by and made with the support of MIRROR Gallery, Arts University Plymouth. This body of work was made by Louisa Fairclough before, during and after a lengthy period of mental illness.

This exhibition at MIRROR gallery features two related works by Louisa Fairclough, Feel Stupid (2024) and Mental Falls (2024), both of which respond to a sketchbook by Louisa’s sister, Hetta Fairclough (1973-2008). Hetta’s drawings, which take the form of assemblages and visual poems, probe at the complexities of being, pulling on her own experience to give voice to psychological intensities.

Feel Stupid (2024) has been commissioned by and made with the support of MIRROR Gallery, Arts University Plymouth. The expanded film installation, which has five 16mm film loops that stretch across the gallery space, responds to a single page from Hetta’s sketchbook. The page, now smudged with the shadow of time, has strips of masking tape that hinge from the centre over newspaper cuttings. Along each length of masking tape is a phrase she's written in felt-tip pen. Shards of these phrases were intoned by a singer and recorded onto magnetic tape; they now splinter across the film loops like a maelstrom of anxious thoughts. Projected onto five small pieces of float glass are gestures illuminated by a flashgun, glimpses of a pulling down and a contracting of things, a turmoil inside the head and body, an embodiment of some sort of reality that is not. As Vicky Smith writes “translated into a range of linguistic ruptures, Louisa Fairclough confronts the ongoing taboo and misunderstanding surrounding mental illness, painful experience that must, according to Julia Kristeva, be named and taken into a new form.” The 16mm film installation was made with Louisa’s long-term collaborators, composer Richard Glover, singer Samuel Middleton and performer Nancy Trotter Landry.

Mental Falls (2024) is an essay film weaving the voices of singers with Louisa's own voice in a close observation of Hetta's sketchbook. Page by page, Louisa’s interpretation of her sister’s drawings - spoken and sung - becomes the soundtrack to the film. Cherry Smyth writes "The spoken and sung ‘voice in difficulty’ responds to the written voice, embodying and extending its sphere of painful influence in a brilliant and enthralling vocal score."