Vices

Online exhibition and merchandise proposal



February 2021

Triptych of still life oil paintings
8-page fold-out exhibition leaflet and A3 poster
Merchandise proposal

Part of what makes addiction such a difficult social and health issue to resolve is the stigma surrounding it: I too was largely unsympathetic until I moved to the US and encountered a drug culture much more open than that of the UK, and the lines between “responsible use” and addiction became blurred beyond anything I’d expected before. People led complex lives with complex reasons for their behaviour. What made me so different from them?

In looking at my own vices, I was humbled. Addiction was no longer this distant affliction that could never happen to me; as my friend Kat put it, “addiction doesn’t discriminate”. But too often our pride gets in the way of our empathy; we hate admitting hypocrisy and we react defensively rather than receptively. How do we open up the conversation around addiction, then, when it’s so stigmatised in the first place?

I believe art is the medium. When we use colour, texture, mood and symbolism to translate these difficult concepts into something more universal, we allow a wider audience to see our thoughts and processes and pains poured into a piece of work, and they can interpret and interact with it as they wish. We can feel Edvard Munch’s frustration and agony in The Scream; our hearts break collectively when we hear an ’80s ballad about lost love. The format works as an access point to these emotions. The
genre of still life allows us to look at these figurative objects and their relationship to one another without distraction, so we can find meaning in them.

Once the art is complete, how should it exist in the world? How can it take on a life of its own outside of the artist? Music is released as albums; plays are performed in theatres. It made sense for these paintings to be displayed in an exhibition, with the possibility of using ticket and merchandise sales to raise money for charities helping those affected by addiction. This is my proposal of promotional materials to contextualise the paintings. Through these
posters, brochures and the works themselves, I am asking people to find themselves within the paintings, opening up the discussion to everyone—addict or otherwise—so that we can start talking about addiction more frankly, with greater compassion and less stigma.