[Reader-list] [Announcements] online contribution

[Ajaykumar]

Goldsmiths
and

The Royal College of Art

Press Release
1st August  2004

pages of madness

An on-line exhibition of insidious beauty, sensuality, and contemplation

A re-conception of concrete poetry and ciné-roman in multi-media

A disturbing artistic exploration of racism's engendering of mental illness

One hundred million years to view this in entirety
or fifteen seconds in snapshot

pages of madness, a new web exhibition by 
ajaykumar, practicing artist, and academic at 
Goldsmiths, University of London and the Royal 
College of Art, is currently on-line for public 
viewing. You are invited to visit the exhibition 
at: http://www.pagesofmadness.com

The exhibition focuses on mental illness in 
ethnic minorities following recent medical 
research which suggests that, due to social 
factors such as systematic racism, black people 
in the UK are significantly more likely than 
white people to suffer from mental illnesses such 
as schizophrenia.  A recent high profile case was 
that of boxer, Frank Bruno.

Drawing on medical evidence and the artists' own 
experiences of mental health issues, the on-line 
exhibition provides an experimental response to 
this phenomenon, taking the psyche of a mentally 
ill person using interplays of text, sound, 
photographic and video image. It includes 
reconceptions of concrete poetry and the 
ciné-roman, investigations in narrative space and 
construction, and explorations of the 
contemporary notions of cyberspace and Asian 
ideas of void.

Exhibited in an on-line gallery, the work 
primarily uses only two colours: black and white. 
Spare poems engage with images; both fade in and 
out in a random sequence so a permutation is 
never repeated. A total of 250 images are 
presented with a soundtrack to emphasise 
constancy rather than variation.

Notes to editors:
o pages of madness is part of an ongoing 
collaboration with Diverse Minds magazine, which 
will see a future web exhibition on the theme of 
mental illness and asylum seekers.
o Project consultant: Dr Richard Parkin, Barnet 
Psychiatric Unit, Barnet Hospital, London
o pages of madness has received a Millennium Award from the Peabody Trust.

Press enquiries: Janet Aikman, Goldsmiths 
Communications and Publicity,	tel 020 7919 7909,
                                                                                                          
	ext-comms at gold.ac.uk
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