Artist Statement:

‘I tie a yellow ribbon around the things I want you to see and I disguise those I don’t with the wallpaper from our living room.’

With this poster I am attempting to disguise the changes that have been made to the city of Stoke on Trent with wallpaper, a technique used in dementia care homes to prevent residents from entering rooms they are not meant to. By covering doors with wallpaper the doors become almost invisible to the residents, this is a proven technique to avoid unnecessary confusion. This use of disguising is similarly seen with the use of hoarding in city centres, the knocking down and rebuilding of city spaces is masked from the public with huge boards for our own protection.

Yellow is the last colour in the spectrum that a dementia sufferer loses, by using yellow images from the City’s past I am offering a visual memory of a time that many dementia sufferers may still remember, an alternative view to the now constantly changing city that would perhaps confuse those that only remember the times gone by. Alzheimer’s is a regressive disease that takes you back in time through your life, slowly removing the people and places that you know.

My work discusses issues around dementia, with emphasis on Alzheimer’s. There are a growing number of people living with dementia in cities and communities across the world.

Click here to go to Katie Shipley’s Website

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TALKING CITY is Anna Francis’ Longhouse Guest Editor project, for March 2010.

Click here to go to the project page.