Exhibitions
Lindsey Mendick: Hot Mess
23 November - 27 April 2025
Universal Ticket
Our new Universal Ticket allows access to our entire gallery. This ticket operates on a ‘Pay If and What You Can’ basis. Upon arrival, please go to gallery reception where our universal ticket is available. No pre-booking necessary. If you would like to make a Group Booking or have additional access needs, please contact us on scva@uea.ac.uk or 01603 593199
Lindsey Mendick (b.1987) subverts the tradition of ceramics with her darkly comic, confessional works. Her newly commissioned sculptures for the Sainsbury Centre will be strikingly personal, tackling social taboos and exposing the artist’s secret fears.
For the Why Do We Take Drugs? season, Mendick will reveal her reliance on antidepressants and relationship with alcohol, used to navigate stressful social situations and cope with the threatening unpredictability of daily life. Mendick’s subversive practice candidly addresses the stigma attached to the use of certain medications, such as antidepressants.
Positioning her works amongst paintings by Francis Bacon and Leonora Carrington and sculpture from the Arctic to Africa, Mendick will create a surprising intervention in the Sainsbury Centre’s ‘Living Area’ collection display to disrupt the clean aesthetic like a wild and unwelcome guest at a party.
Hot Mess is part of a six-month season of interlinked exhibitions and events that explore the question Why Do We Take Drugs?
Lindsey Mendick, SH*TFACED at Jupiter Artland, 2023. Installation View. Copyright Lindsey Mendick. Image by John Mackenzie.
Universal Ticket
You might be interested in
Why Do We Take Drugs?
Through a six-month season of interlinked exhibitions and programmes, the Sainsbury Centre explores the question Why Do We Take Drugs? From alcohol and caffeine to ayahuasca and heroin, this season uses art to take visitors on a journey of investigation, inviting audiences to explore the world of global drug cultures from illegal to familiar across one mind-blowing museum landscape.
FIND OUT MORE
Power Plants: Intoxicants, Stimulants and Narcotics
For millennia people have used the psychoactive properties of plants as an integral part of social, ceremonial and religious life. The show will reference global artefacts that are connected with the traditional consumption of tobacco and snuff, betel nut, kava, tea and palm wine, alongside an exploration of the sacred, hallucinogenic cactus, peyote.
FIND OUT MORE
Ayahuasca & Art of the Amazon
This exhibition considers the impact of the mind-altering, psychotropic vine – ayahuasca – within Western Amazonian social life. It explores how the ritual consumption of ayahuasca is linked to their artistic production.
FIND OUT MORE
Heroin Falls
Heroin Falls unflinchingly reveals heroin dependency as seen through the eyes of two remarkable photographers. The exhibition aims to show how substance use and dependency is a global challenge that transcends race, location and class.
FIND OUT MORE