A Solitary Waltz

By Jojo Taylor

A hybrid textile and sound piece combining the style of clothes that a female might have worn entering an asylum in the 1900’s and a strait jacket that she may have been restrained in. Made out of a blanket, it has comments from the asylum staff stitched into it. 

Photographs of the patients’ faces are printed onto the piece, but with their mouths erased. Voiceless, we will never know their story, of their lives, in their own words, the stories that brought them to this place.  George Radcliffe suffered with mental health issues and documents in the Delmé-Radcliffe Collection and The Hill End collection inspired this piece of art.

 

Female case book Hill End Asylum

VIII HM1/Pa3/14, Female case book III, HM1/Pa3/13,DE/R/C286/5, D/ER/C118/1, D/ER/C118/2, DE/R/C107/17, -DE/R/B42/2, DE/R/106/4 and DE/R/C107/5

 

Click on the link below to hear Jojo talk about her piece.

This page was added on 03/06/2015.

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  • this is very moving an perceptive – you are right that “you cannot take anyone with you to the place you go when you are ill” and many of us need reminding of this occasionally

    By Eva Cantin (04/06/2015)