Facing

Taken over six weeks as part of the First Fortnight Visual Arts Festival 2012 and shown at Filmbase Gallery and the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art, this is a series of 104 portraits and 104 accompanying text panels exploring mental health, mental illness and the stigma society places on them. The series was inspired by and based on the Whatstigma hashtag on Twitter, which sees users break the taboo of discussing mental health concerns in public.

Sitters were invited from across the mental health spectrum in Ireland, encompassing those with no specific issues who felt the topic needed to be addressed, through those with family members and friends who had been affected, to those who suffer with serious illness.

A small selection is presented here