Information about the presenters:

Jade Montserrat

Title: Care and resistance: a reflection on art making in times of catastrophe.

Montserrat, reflecting on her art-making process, will discuss how her live art and performance making practice (and their residues) gesture towards mourning invisible, invisibilized, vulnerable, precarious, criminalised, tortured lives in solidarity with such movements as Black Lives Matter, and all campaigns against violence.

Dolly Sen

Dolly will be talking about her practice and how it relates to mental health and justice, and using creative practice to ask questions about justice and developing ways to answer them, using artist-based research, and how using decision-making and other processes to contribute to some healing.

Dolly’s work in this area includes challenging injustices in the mental health system, asking what is madness, and confronting institutional monsters using rage, love and art. For example, last year she ‘sectioned’ the DWP in a political art-action.

Mark Titchner

Mark Titchner’s (b. 1973, Luton, UK) work involves an exploration of the tensions between the different belief systems that inform our society, be they religious, scientific or political. Focusing on an exploration of words and language, in recent years much of his production has been based in the public realm both in the UK and internationally. These public works have often been created from extended group activities.

Many of his recent projects have explored issues around mental health. He is currently involved with the Mental Health and Justice project, a multi-disciplinary research initiative funded by Wellcome, working with the team that are investigating issues around the assessment of mental capacity, particularly in relation to complex or contested cases.  A public artwork relating to this work was installed on the perimeter of the Bethlem Royal Hospital in 2019. The graffiti that appeared on this artwork in June 2020 led to the production of the documentary ‘RIP SENI’ which focuses on the death of Olaseni Lewis, a 23-year-old black man after being restrained by 11 police officers while in the care of the hospital in 2010.

Image: Installation view of Art & Protest: What’s there to be mad about? featuring work by Dolly Sen, Help the Normals.