Joy Parker
A journey into...
the building that used to be Glenside Hospital, previously known as Bristol Lunatic Asylum, and is now part of the University of the West of England. This is where my grandmother spent most of her adult life as a patient diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia.
a visual descent....
into the depths of long term institutionalism, using the Biblical story of Jonah and the Whale as a metaphor. It is inspired by my grandmother who spent 45 years in an asylum in Bristol where her case notes report her as asking:
Why did Jonah swallow the whale?
This film records the ritual created both to release me from a five year art project about my grandmother Gertrude Parker, who spent 45 years in Bristol Lunatic Asylum, and to release her from this investigation and from the suffering she experienced in her life. I made a 7ft sculpture symbolising Gertrude, from willow and tissue, in a dress decorated with photos of all her descendants, initially for exhibition but with the intent to set light to it and let it float burning down the river.