The Glasgow School of Art

Mel Brimfield

Mel Brimfield's interdisciplinary and collaborative practice is rooted in scripted performance, incorporating live work, moving image, staged audio, installation and drawing. Operating at the intersection of theatre, live art and film, Brimfield's work aims to bring audiences for the arts together and erode historic distinctions between creative fields.

Her recent work for The Tetley, Leeds, From This World, to That Which Is to Come takes its title from John Bunyan's 1678 parable The Pilgrim's Progress, which describes a fictional pilgrimage from 'The City of Destruction' to 'The Celestial City'. Brimfield reimagines this tale as a loose allegory for a collapse of mental health and the fraught journey to recovery. This exhibition marked the culmination of two years' work, based on a research residency at Bethlem Royal Hospital's National Psychosis Unit and Kings College Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience in 2018-19.