When talking about mental health it’s hard not to draw a parallel to COVID-19.
It has shaped how we handle mental health both individually and professionally from the newly implemented government initiatives of Tele-Health, an additional 20 million for mental health care and suicide prevention and psychologist/counsellor appointments via Zoom. COVID-19 has drawn this overtly stigmatized epidemic out of the dark shining a light on its growing effects as it disrupts our societal and individual core values and identities.
My battle with mental health began long before COVID-19 became the new normal, having suffered from PTSD, depression, anxiety and substance abuse. The latter only perpetuated the cycle and symptoms experienced, but in a weird existential twist kept me safe until such a time as Richard Ashcroft of the 90s band The Verve once sang, “The drugs don’t work, they only make you worse”.
An integral part of any mental health recovery is an external support network, whether it be counselling, psychology, institutional, friends or fellowship where the issues, thoughts, and emotions experienced can be explored in a safe environment, weakening the hold they bear on the individual. Mine came by way of a rehabilitation service and 12 step programs in 2004, bringing about a greater awareness of self, an interest in psychology. Until that time I was just a feather drifting at the mercy of the wind. In 2008 I attended the Andy Warhol Retrospective at the Gallery of Modern Art which awoke a yearning to create that I had not experienced since I was a child drawing cartoons, graffiti and air force planes in my childhood home. In all honesty, art scared me, but a seed was planted and before a dark cloud had once again begun to loom above me in 2008, fate intervened placing three books in my path; The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama, A New Earth by Eckart Tolle and The Artist Way by Julia Cameron.
The first two are the only books I have ever read cover to cover and the latter I’d only got halfway through, as it was confrontational being loosely based on a twelve step program which addressed finding your creativity. By mid 2008 I was mentally and emotionally closed off again till attending a rehab again in 2009.
Figure 1
Some call it 'God Conscience' and others call it 'Intuition'. By the halfway mark of that two year stay within the rehab, a voice deep within me screamed to face my fear of art and go to Queensland College of Art and Design. By the end of first year I had found my exit, being that of a visual discourse where my wounded child had found his voice within the themes of memory recall, psychology and nostalgia. My practice drew me into the moment, a moment that was not consumed by resentment of the past or fear of the future, I was present.
Youth is wasted on the young
I am a very black and white thinker with little room for grey areas and as such posed the one question that had the power to change my life, “How can play as a strategy of art making build self esteem”? This question formed the basis of my 2014 Honours research ‘Make Yourself’ as I needed answers to how I could better myself and how art could play a role in that search for self improvement. The work consisted of a table top arcade machine made of approximately 3000 lego bricks (See Fig. 1) of differing colours assembled over 38 hours with an android tablet (See Fig. 2) as the screen with a video of me building the arcade machine. The work had become a deconstruction of a happy childhood memory and through play and temporal layering became a reconstruction of myself in the now.
My art practice revealed itself as the play I did not experience as a child, as I was surrounded by ready made toys such as skateboards, BMX bikes and arcade consoles. These offered skill based growth opportunities only and I rarely created something from start to finish. I rarely was a creator, which was a common theme in my life till I completed the rehab and my degree. While theorists, philosophers and psychologists argue the validity and value of nostalgia and memory recall as a means of healing from past trauma, most agree the correlation between plays ability to foster a stronger sense of self and greater self worth. Play for adults is just as pivotal and while the activities differ in their action and direction they are still beneficial in its offerings of emotional intelligence, an escape from the mundane, willingness to experiment without fear of judgement, support via a social network and drawing one into the present.
Figure 2
The power of three
Once again I was met by an unstoppable force, the looming dark cloud that was the ghosts of my past and for a third time I was in a battle to reclaim my place in the world. My ability to cope with the intense mental and emotional rollercoaster my honours research had triggered was unbearable and I had acknowledged a recourse back to substance abuse within my exegesis as a semiotic analysis. Because of my high ego, I again chose to walk away from my support network at a time when I needed it the most. To process the disturbing mental and emotional rollercoaster I was experiencing, a familiar pattern in my life. It took till 2019 to recover all the while screaming internally, as I did in the past, as my inner child needed to create but was creatively blocked as a result of the medication I was on. It was an extremely arduous journey crawling back inch by inch, then what can only be expressed as a year, '2020' happened and by February the world knew of the coming pandemic. I have taken everything I have learnt in my recoveries and degree and applied it to my personal and professional life. In 2019 I created my first work that was an ode to my support network, those that carried me when I was unable to at
the beginning of 2019.
'2020 People Who Need People Are the Luckiest People in the World/Use Under Adult Supervision' ( See Fig. 3) was accepted as a part of Sculpture in the Goal (NSW), Swell Smalls Gallery (Gold Coast) and in the last week accepted in a Zine in the United Kingdom whose theme was addressing Mental Health.
Apparently I know just a little bit about that.
By the beginning of the March to June lockdown my first ever Swell Sculpture Festival (Gold Coast) proposal had been accepted as a finalist which was a response to the traumatising imagery of Australian wildlife suffering as a result of the 2019-2020 bushfire season. Based on origami a practice I remember fondly as a child Totem/The Fragile (See Fig. 4) was an exploration of the fragility of our fauna and flora. It was my most ambitious work to date and in my first year of making art outside of the institution environment it was a trial by fire as I didn't know how to recreate the origami aesthetic in composite board and as I found in my research for Honours this is the esteem building element I had researched.
To challenge myself, my thinking, embrace what I’m good at, acknowledge my accomplishments and ask for help when unsure. I had received a High Commendation for my artist statement in the festival. The sculpture was also accepted as a finalist in Sculpture on the Edge (See Fig. 5) on the Sunshine Coast for which received a High Commendation. I was honoured to share this work with the Sunshine Coast as Peregian had also endured catastrophic bushfires during the 2019-2020 bushfire season. Due to Covid-19 and a loss of hours at work I successfully applied for my first RADF Grant through the City of Gold Coast Council’s Germinate Program to help pay for transportation, insurance, documentation and a revamp of the sculpture to present at the Sunshine Coast. I've had another work accepted for an exhibition in the United Kingdom concerning Australia’s role in climate change though due to Covid-19 has understandably been placed on hold till next year and in December I start a residency to explore new work at The Walls Artspace here on the Gold Coast.
This year I stood on the shoulders of giants, my success falls mostly to those I surround myself with as the one thing I have learnt above all else is in the last 15 years and especially in these unprecedented times is the symbiotic need for a support network and play [art] in my life. In hindsight. I now understand why I avoided the latter for so long, it has been the most confronting of journeys and the most rewarding. The best gestalt therapist on the Gold Coast couldn’t get me to share my wounded child, but art could and it has been the greatest of gifts. As cliche as it sounds, art saved my life and QCAD was the bridge between the past and the present. It has given me a voice when I can not speak, confidence when I feel small and the ability to listen when I am closed off. I don't believe in accidents so a year and a half on since my extended relapse everything that has happened in the last 16 years, attending the Warhol exhibition, those three books, the calling to arms via my practice to heal from the past to the people placed
in my path along the way has led to my success this year both in my personal and professional life.
Totem/ The Fragile at Sculpture on the Edge was proudly supported by the Regional Arts Development Fund and is a partnership between the Queensland Government and the City of Gold Coast Council to support local arts and culture in regional Queensland.
Meet the author
John Anthony Forno (Class of 2012 and 2014)
John Anthony Forno is an Gold Coast Interdisciplinary Artist whose work draws from childhood memories through the vehicles of play, environment, scale and nostalgia. John Anthony Forno completed a Bachelors of Digital Media (Fine Art) with Honours at the Queensland College of Art and Desgin, Griffith University.
