m-e-n-t-a-l deals with the social and physical space of the mental asylum using three inadequate modes of represenation: photography, maps and the written word. The photographs are details of a recently closed mental hospital which to me resembles a giant mutated Victorian country railway station and connotes elegiac feelings of the end of a beautiful summer's day out. The maps are edited blow-ups of the outlines of hospitals around London and resemble in some cases ancient ruins, in others bizarre alien space-craft or cartoon monsters. The texts exploit a severely limited language, being words and phrases restricted to anagrams of and selections from the letters m, e, n, t, a and l.

m-e-n-t-a-l was shown, along with forget, as part of a season of audio-visual work at Woodlands Gallery, Blackheath, London, UK during Greenwich & Docklands International Festival, July 1998.

m-e-n-t-a-l: a sequence of permutations

m-e-n-t-a-l: autosequence (60 seconds)