Bobby Baker (artist)

Bobby Baker is a female performance artist who for a number of years has translated her personal life experiences into outside performances and other intimate works of art.

Information

Baker lives in London, England. In a career spanning nearly four decades she has, amongst other things, danced with meringue ladies; made a life-sized edible version of her family; and driven around the streets of Haarlem, Holland strapped to the back of a truck yelling at passers by through a megaphone to ‘Pull Yourselves Together.’ Baker’s touring exhibition Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me premiered at the Wellcome Collection in 2009, and the accompanying book of the same name won the Mind Book of the Year 2011. [1] Her most recent show, Mad Gyms & Kitchens, was commissioned as part of the London 2012 Unlimited project for the Cultural Olympiad. Bobby Baker is the Artistic Director of Daily Life Ltd.

Daily Life Ltd is the disability-led arts organisation that produces the work of Bobby Baker, one of the UK’s most celebrated artists. Together with fellow collaborators, they investigate and celebrate daily life and its limitations through an ambitious programme of artworks focusing on arts in health and mental wellbeing. These artworks cross many disciplines and provide unique, high quality artistic experiences for a wide range of audiences both nationally and internationally. Above all they challenge the stigmatisation and discrimination of people with experience of mental illness and raise public awareness of this vital sector. In March 2011 Daily Life Ltd became part of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio.

Drawing Mental Illness

In 1996, Baker was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and then breast cancer. During her recovery, she wrote Mental Illness and Me, a diary of drawings. It consists of a public presentation of her drawings and watercolors that are considered to be poignant, honest, funny, moving, and shocking. Over the span of 11 years of healing. It serves as a personal journal and a depiction of her recovery that allows the audience to get an inside view and translation of what goes on in her head, a visual representation of her experiences, expressed through 771 drawings that served as her emotional release for over a decade.[2]

References

  1. ↑ Flood, Alison. "Bobby Baker diary wins Minds Book of The Year". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 March 2014.
  2. ↑ Popova, Maria. "Drawing Mental Illness: Artist Bobby Baker's Visual Diary". Brain Pickings. Retrieved 14 January 2013.

External links

Further reading

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