Reassembling The Self: Susan Aldworth

Reassembling The Self is an exhibition centred on a study of the condition of schizophrenia, which weaves together art, science, psychiatry and individual histories in an extraordinary exploration of self, perception and the fragility of human identity.

‘’To think of schizophrenia as a fragmented mind and then to focus on isolated fragments – the altered visual perceptions, heard voices, paranoid delusions – is to miss the whole experience… All of the work [in this exhibition] is at heart about human identity, the sense of self and how it holds itself together.’’
Professor Anya Hurlbert, Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University

As artist in residence in 2012 at the Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University, Susan Aldworth took schizophrenia as her theme, building on collaborations with neuroscientists, psychiatrists and service users to produce a series of remarkable lithographs that challenge the sense of identity through their dislocated imagery. These are dramatic, powerful works that locate an essential human experience in schizophrenia.

Together with her film – based on a seminal text about schizophrenia, Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness – Aldworth’s work also stands in a suggestive dialogue with other works in the exhibition. There are paintings and drawings by Camille Ormston and Kevin Mitchinson, two skilled artists with a schizophrenia diagnosis.

A series of events is being organised during the exhibition to raise awareness and to promote research into new treatments of schizophrenia.