This soft sculpture is stitched with a stream of associations. The words continue round the form in a spiral without punctuation, one thought running into the next. For me, stitching text is an intimate and careful way of reading, it sets down fleeting, barely conscious thoughts in a way that they will be remembered.

‘Identity shift big changes is who i am fixed or in flux the connectedness of self unwise decisions florid thinking interprets black as white and vice versa overrule cannot think straight in my right mind thought derailment you are not yourself things are not as they seem to be’

Lucid is part of a series of sculptures which I made as part of a project with researchers at the King’s College Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. I worked in dialogue with their investigations into Advance Directives for people with experience of Bipolar. The project raised ethical debates around mental capacity, what happens when this is lost and ultimately, our human rights. Should the right to make our own decisions ever be taken away?

This is part of Bethlem Gallery’s Mental Health and Justice project, funded by Wellcome. Lucid and other works from the project were featured in the Lancet in 2021.

It was a pleasure talking to the artists on the Mental Health Museum Wakefield Step Up course about my work as an artist researcher.