You are now in the fourth section of the exhibition, called ‘Fireworks: A Protest Exhibition’, the poster for which was described in track 3.
‘Fireworks’ appears to have been the first time Amiss used an exhibition of her works to raise awareness of the harm that she and other survivors had experienced in psychiatric systems. She wrote in February 1989: .... “I intend to cause more trouble with my protest exhibition ‘Fireworks’, which I’m due to hang next Sunday, if I last that long.”
In the archive there was a price list Amiss made for this exhibition, listing the names of each work she exhibited. Using this, we were able to track down 26 of the 49 works.
Amiss was a keen traveller, visiting Italy, Nepal, India, Bolivia, Brazil, Russia and Egypt, mostly in the 1970s and 80s. Among the works she showed in ‘Fireworks’ were a series of ten photographs from her time in Hong Kong in the 1980s, and another series of ten photographs from a holiday in Málaga in 1959.
These two photographic series are displayed on the wall to your left. Each individual photograph is about 20 x 25 cm. They are arranged in two horizontal rows of five photos on each row. I will describe one of the photographs from the Málaga series.
Titled ‘Malaga Scene’, it shows a waterside path in this coastal city in Spain. From the bottom left-hand corner of the frame, a low wall leads the eye towards rocky hills in the distance. They are covered in vegetation. The sky is brilliant blue over the hills towards the left, but to the right the sky is hidden by thick white cloud. The bright sun coming from over the sea to the left makes the low wall cast a very stark shadow, creating the impression of a long black triangle dividing the image along the path.
On the opposite side of the path are piles of stone running parallel to the low wall all the way to the horizon. This could be an additional layer of sea defence, or possibly rubble from demolition, as Málaga was undergoing major change during the time Amiss visited. Beyond this are grand but dilapidated buildings in the old city, possibly scheduled for demolition.
In writing about this work, Amiss focused less on the buildings and more on the people, admiring their resilience in challenging conditions. On the right of the scene there is a man riding a brown donkey along the path towards us, as if heading out of frame towards the right. He wears a suit jacket, and shirt and a brown hat with a brim. He sits awkwardly on the donkey, jostling for space with two traditional large woven baskets. It’s not clear what they contain. Following him along the path is a person with short black hair wearing a white, short-sleeved shirt and black trousers. A child behind them in shorts and an orange top is half turning in the direction of Amiss’s camera.
These are among a number of artworks in Amiss’s ‘Fireworks’ exhibition that do not appear to have a clear connection to protest, along with a series of beautiful watercolours of autumnal trees painted in gold and orange hues, on display to your right.
The more overtly protest-related works that Amiss exhibited in ‘Fireworks’ are now lost, but from her writing we know that they included what she called “graffiti” and described as “framed written statements” such as ‘Psychiatrists are mad’.
This slogan echoes the late-20th-century anti-psychiatry movement, which questioned the legitimacy and ethics of mainstream psychiatry. Whilst here Amiss uses ‘mad’ as an insult and resisted the term herself, she did later affiliate with Mad Pride activism that reclaimed the term.
Although these graffiti signs have not been found, we believe they were similar in appearance to those in the display case on the wall opposite, which the tactile path leads to next.
This is the end of stop six. The tactile path turns behind you to lead back out of this section towards the next.