The Melbourne Review

Reverie: The Art of Recovery

June 2013

The Dax Centre hosts Reverie, an exhibition which celebrates the therapeutic role of art-making for individuals and for education around mental health.

Dr. Cunningham Dax was an important figure in the development of clinical art programs in both Britain and Australia. Dax saw the power and value of art pieces developed by mental health patients and retrieved a number of remedial paintings which were tossed into the bins of psychiatric hospitals after the institutions closed down.

The title of the Dax Centre’s current exhibition, Reverie, refers to a state of mind in which one’s imagination is able to flow without mediation. The term reverie carries a different meaning for everyone and, although broad, is a common thread between the paintings, textile pieces and works on paper which Dax recovered from the obsolete clinics from the 1950s through to the 80s. Some pieces depict the intangible narrative patients slipped into when unconscious, others the sanctuary of the homes they were away from. The exhibition highlights, as Dax strived to do throughout his career, the possibility for education and understanding which these emotionally rich artworks hold.

A striking and unexpected section of the collection is titled ‘Emotion as Colour’. A wall is dedicated to Suzanna Donato’s vibrant tapestries and paintings from a period of depression suffered in 1970. A quote from Donato, discussing how loneliness is not a negative thing, accompanies her work. Mental illnesses and trauma are popularly associated with darkness and twisted figures in solitude. ‘Reverie’, however, highlights how the imagination is world which individuals going through a period of loss, trauma or intense sadness can enter into, explore and use as a platform to create from. Self-portraits depict patients floating through their dreams, surrounded by colour and within an environment which indicates possibility. 

“The use of bright colours in association with mental illness shows how suffering can still be connected with joy and hope,” says co-curator of ‘Reverie’, Emma Last. “We like to show both ends of the spectrum – it’s like that saying how to know happiness you need to know sadness.”

The Dax Centre aims to show how artistic creation can allow patients to retain a sense of identity, get lost in time and free themselves from potentially stressful and task-orientated environments.

Dr. Cunningham Dax’s desire for art to be used as a teaching tool shines through in a collaboration with students from Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar. In association with the Dax Centre’s Enhancing Emotional Literacy program, the Year Six girls created small paintings and short written reflections on the role reverie played in their lives. The students approached the task with surprising maturity, one girl eloquently writing “what I painted is not what I think about at all but is able to show the peace I feel and the fact that there are no boundaries to your imagination”.

The Dax Centre has formulated an exhibition which gives the once-discarded works of mental health patients a space again, in both the world of art and education. Its focus on recovery, and wellness rather than illness, both informs the public about mental health recovery and instils in the viewer their own sense of reverie.

Reverie shows at The Dax Centre, Genetics Lane off Royal Parade, Kenneth Myer Building, University of Melbourne, until September 21
daxcentre.org

Image:

Renee Sutton, No title, 1959 gouache on paper 42 x 33.5 cm
The Cunningham Dax Collection

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