Personal Context- Bobby Baker is a female artist who produces radical work across performance, drawing and multi media - During the 4 decades of her career, she has done a wide range of different work: -> danced with meringue ladies -> made life-sized version of her family out of cake -> driven around the streets of London strapped to the back of a truck yelling at passers by through a megaphone to 'Pull Yourselves Together' - In 1996, she was diagnosed with as having borderline personality disorder -> 'Borderline Personality Disorder' is also known as emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD) -> it is a type of Personality Disorder, which she would feel at least five of the following things: --> You feel very worried about people abandoning you, and would do anything to stop that happening. --> You have very intense emotions that last from a few hours to a few days and can change quickly (for example, from feeling very happy and confident to suddenly feeling low and sad). --> You don't have a strong sense of who you are, and it can change significantly depending on who you're with. --> You find it very hard to make and keep stable relationships. --> You feel empty a lot of the time. --> You act impulsively and do things that could harm you (such as binge eating, using drugs or driving dangerously). --> You often self-harm or have suicidal feelings. --> You have very intense feelings of anger, which are really difficult to control. --> When very stressed, you may also experience paranoia or dissociation. - Baker has also dealt with the theme of mental health 'Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me 1997- 2008'- she has touring exhibition 'Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me 1997- 2008', which has premiered at the Wellcome Collection in 2009 - she began her Diary Drawings in 1997 when she became a patient at a day centre - it was originally private, after a while, it became a way for her to communicate these complex thoughts and emotions to her family, friends and professionals - Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me, is an autobiography with 158 drawings and watercolours -> the drawings were about her own personal experiences of day hospitals, acute psychiatric wards -> spanning 11 years of mental, physical, and emotional healing -> it shows the ups and downs of her recovery, family life, work as an artist, breast cancer in a humorous way -> Baker has selected these 158 drawings out from the 711 drawings she created from the slow journey of recovery she experienced - By drawing her daily recovery experiences, she reveals the reality of living with mental illnesses, and of society's lack of understanding - She stated that "I think mental illness is the worst of anything. The hierarchy of suffering is sort of bound into our society. But my personal experience is that the isolation and anguish of severe mental illness was much worse than…having something physical that people could understand better." (Popova, 2012) Box Story, 2001- The performance is staged in Baker's local church in Holloway - It "is deeper, darker and finally more joyful than anything she has produced before." (Spencer, 2001) - Baker wore an overall with heels while carrying an enormous cardboard box -> at the end of the performance, she sweeps the mess into the box and then crawls inside it herself, as if it were a coffin - The performance is 75 minutes long in total -> in this performance, Baker uses household items such as: matches, washing powder, icing sugar and orange juice to tell her life story and create a map of the fallen world that we inhabit --> each of these items convey a piece of her memory ---> "The cornflakes remind her of the time she emptied a whole packet on to the drive from her pram, the wine of the time she got disastrously drunk at her 21st-birthday party. It is the mustard powder, though, that brings back the most painful memory, of the time her father drowned on a family holiday in Norfolk when she was 15." (Spencer, 2001) - Baker has used a religious setting in her performance -> There is nothing sentimental or self-pitying about Baker's account of this family tragedy, but it colours the whole piece, which becomes progressively darker. Her map, made with sugar, wine, matches, washing powder and a host of other ingredients, moves from creation to chaos. Humans are represented by Black Magic chocolates and bring war, rape and murder to the scene. By the end the map is an unholy mess, an Eden screwed up by humanity, and Baker recalls crying by the side of the road after a car accident and repeating, "It's all my fault, everything is all my fault". - A first-rate choir singing superb choral music by Jocelyn Pook has sang for Baker's performance, giving a theme of morality and original sin to the performance -> as the choir sing a melancholy requiem of words from the packets - "Colman's double mustard superfine compound" - Baker springs a brilliant coup de theatre, as absurdly funny as it is touching, which suggests redemption and resurrection BibliographyPopova, M. (2012). Drawing Mental Illness: Artist Bobby Baker’s Visual Diary. [online] Brain Pickings. Available at: https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/01/04/bobby-baker-diary-drawings-mental-illness-and-me/ [Accessed 31 Jan. 2019].
Spencer, C. (2001). From the domestic to the divine. [online] Telegraph.co.uk. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4724225/From-the-domestic-to-the-divine.html [Accessed 31 Jan. 2019].
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Artist StatementOne’s clothing can reflect their character and mood. In particular, changes in their style of clothes and choice of colour correlates to changes in their relationship with closed and loved ones. Archives
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