The Yellow Wallpaper
Eastside Projects, Birmingham
This piece of art has two stories behind it
First is the 1892 short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
А young mother with postnatal depression is haunted by the garish yellow wallpaper that appears to mutate from the walls of the room she is convalescing in
At night, the wallpaper feeds into her psyche, it’s fiendish pattern torturing and deceiving her, whilst her seclusion slowly drives her into hysterical madness
The gothic short story is a feminist exploration in attitudes towards female mental health and inherent horror of the domestic
At 18 years old Mendick had
a nervous breakdown taking
to her bed in her parent’s house
Agoraphobic and totally insomniac, one night the artist looked out of her window and saw six men in black, pacing the cul-de-sac on walkie talkies
She was utterly terrified. The next day she told her mother, but because of her daughters mental state, she didn’t believe her
Days later the news broke that their neighbour had been the Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, and he had been poisoned