GET THE DARK OUT

Get the Dark Out

Artists: Lisa Selby & Dudley

Exhibition Dates: Friday 5th November – Saturday 20th November 2021

Opening Times: Monday – Saturday, 11am-5pm

*Content Warning– drink, drugs, prison, violence, death*

Dudley: Mostly I remember as a kid feeling like scum. That’s what I was called at school when people found out my dad was a dealer. And when he was sent to prison. I’ve been demoralised, humiliated and groomed by people with much more power than me throughout my childhood and after having my home taken, I’ve had nothing stable because I was dependent on someone who relied on illegal labour to survive.

Lisa: I was called ‘disease’, because I was scruffier than everyone else, dirtier. I’d never invite friends back to my council flat, I was ashamed. But I was proud of my dad, he was raising me on his own and doing the best he could. My mother had issues with drink and drugs, and issues with motherhood, she wasn’t around. I told school friends she was dead. It was easier that way.

I thought I’d be the same as her, due to my drinking. But I worked hard on myself and now I’m four years sober and ready to be a mother. I’m finding it hard to conceive though, having just gone through IVF, twice. I’m not ready to mourn my mother and her legacy in me. This is brutal. Loss of motherhood from both ends is grinding me down. I also began to blame the prison system for punishing my partner for behaviours in his drug addiction, for forcing us apart in my last fertile years. This residency is helping me to work stuff out.

Dudley: Sometimes I can’t begin to explain. I live in a different reality to most people. PTSD or as I prefer to call it, a war. At the same time, I wanna be open because other people being candid helped so much.

During the residency, whilst exploring threads of sobriety trauma recovery, my dad relapsed and died. Now he lives with his ancestors. The addict alcoholic ones. Next to those who died in custody. And those who died homeless.

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Nottingham-based artists Lisa Selby and Dudley were selected for a Collaborative Project Bursary, in partnership with New Midland Group, where Lisa and Dudley have created new work with a focus on changing public perceptions around addiction and incarceration. The artists chose to use this period to care for themselves through practice.

This residency has been supported by the New Midland Group Development Programme. New Midland Group is a consortium of three artist-led organisations located in Nottingham: Backlit, One Thoresby Street and Primary.

Photographs from the Opening

Taken by Ray Gumbley