IS THIS WHAT ARISTOTLE WAS TALKING ABOUT?
REBECCA DOCHERTY

I am a creative person. I’ve always been drawn to the artistic and expressive. But over the past few years, my ability to create has been affected in an inconstant manner by my struggles with mental health.

I have often found myself in droughts where I find it incredibly difficult to write, photograph, film, or edit projects - the things I love doing most! The irony of my dilemma is that I’ve found artistic inspiration in my struggles with mental health and that inspiration has aided me in creating what I believe are some of my better works. 
I have taken inspiration from Ana Mendieta and her confronting use of blood in her Body Tracks performance, and Kerry Tribe’s use of dual screens in her film H.M. 
I developed my concept during the 2021 lockdown after watching Bo Burnham’s Inside, as I strongly related to the pains in creating ‘content’ for an audience. 

Through my films and series of photographs, I aim to explore how mental health and creativity are connected. This has been achieved through the installation of two separate videos playing in sync with each other, the right representing creativity and the left representing mental health. The two films interact with each other - conveying the way creativity and mental health are linked. 

I have also used a series of photographs to illustrate how it feels to have your creativity drained by your mental state. I have used this collection of works to analyse two seemingly opposing forces - but perhaps they are more akin than I first thought.