Welcome to the result of a brainfart, that turned out to be a big shit. Since deciding to nurture this shit, and sharing curiously similar artistic anxieties, Anastasia Knowles and Mel Booth began to imagine a character, bursting with ideas, yet hindered with apprehension. The character became a constant presence in their minds, and bore a striking resemblance with that of the protagonist of The Yellow Wall-Paper, an iconic feminist novel by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Yellowing, a collaborative exhibition featuring works from both Anastasia and Melanie, became a home for the imagined tortured artist, who has indeed become quite real in their minds. Although young and only starting out on her artistic journey, she is, like most, haunted by the fear of failing as an artist. She has plunged into the depths of her self-consciousness and materialised her obsessive fantasies into repetitive paintings and curious sculptures, in the hopes of reaching a genius idea for an artwork. 

 

The Yellow-Wallpaper speaks of a woman in the 19th century who is perceived as unwell due to her desire to be creative. Restricted by her husband to only bed rest and mild walks in a holiday house - she becomes obsessed with the obtrusive patterned wallpaper in her room, as it figuratively and literally takes over her reality. 

 

“The colour is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight… I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere.”

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