Mistress Pieces
Join us for a unique book 'opening'
Fingerprint Editions is delighted to announce the ‘opening’ of its publication Mistress Pieces by writer and activist Jen Hyatt in the form of an art installation as part of the Showcase of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival on October 24 9am - 7pm at Civic House, Glasgow.
Framed within a queer love story, Mistress Pieces celebrates madness and its influence on contemporary political and personal relationships, encouraging us to embrace chaos as we seek a new paradigm for living.
In the work, the narrator recounts how she experienced a psychotic episode.
In every moment, words arrive — written on the flaps of cigarette packets, receipts from endless bottles of wine, walls of the house, along the curve of my thigh, in the corners of torn photographs — whatever comes to hand. They are my passion, my relentless lover, controlling space and time, demanding to be present. I call them my ‘mistress pieces’.
The installation in the Project Space at Glasgow’s Civic House re-creates the living room of an ordinary house rendered completely white — a blank space - A Home For Madness. Words and images from Mistress Pieces will sit in the ‘white house’ as an invitation for others to contribute their own ‘mistress pieces’ with art pens they are given when entering. A narration of Mistress Pieces will play in the background. Pay-what-you-can tickets to Jen’s talk at 4.15pm are available here. Otherwise, come along to experience the installation with an open public event from 5-7pm in the Project Space, Ground Floor, Civic House, 26 Civic Street, Glasgow, G4 9RH where Jen will be signing copes of Mistress Pieces. Or order a copy of the printed copy, audio or eBook now.
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The installation recalls Hyatt’s earlier piece, which saw her taking over a row of condemned houses in Hackney, London. Residents of the estate were given markers, paints and spray cans to record on the outside walls the memories of the lives they’d lived within them.
Hyatt went on to create a digital mental health service — Big White Wall — now www.togetherall.com which allowed people to freely express their feelings on ‘bricks’ and gain support from a facilitated peer community. This service has now supported many thousands of people through their lived experiences of mental health.