Peachy Dublin: Get a taste of what’s under your skin

Film-maker Rebecca Bermingham wants to probe beneath the front that people put up every day, she tells Jonathan deBurca Butler

When you speak to Rebecca Bermingham for the first time, you are left with the distinct impression that she doesn’t have a worry in the world. There is a lightness to her being that explains her talent for coming up with charming ideas.

But, like most people, the 24-year-old documentary film-maker has a list of niggling worries, regrets and, she is keen to stress, dreams. She regrets not getting to know her grandmother before she died, dreams of never having to pay the rent again, and wonders if cereal in the middle of the day is breakfast or dinner.

One night while ruminating on one of these, Rebecca came up with the idea for an event called Peachy, a conceptual art exhibition that takes place in Dublin over two separate sets of dates this year.

“There’s been a lot of talk recently around mental health and how it was being addressed in Ireland,” says Rebecca. “And I wanted to be able to do something that would relate to that in some way. I think people spend a lot of their lives acting like everything is peachy, that everything is OK, so this is about acknowledging that sometimes everything isn’t that great. It isn’t always that peachy.”

Rebecca’s project is a collaboration involving a large box, the people of Dublin, a group of artists and a well-known exhibition space. She is currently raising the €4,000 needed for the project on crowd-funding website Kickstarter. Backers can offer between €10 and €200 to the project and in return will be given a range of exclusive gifts which include original prints, limited edition t-shirts and, of course, their name in lights.

Peachy, an exhibition curated by Rebecca Bermingham, below, will comprise a public element, whereby people can make anonymous submissions about their mental state and have their

thoughts turned into a piece of art.

“We have an industrial designer, Jordan Ralph, who is constructing a box for us at the moment,” explains Rebecca. “We’re going to put that box somewhere in Dublin in March. We’re keeping that under wraps for now but it will be central. It has a lovely conceptual design that we hope will intrigue people. I’m about 5’4” so it’s up to my chest I’d say.

"It’s pretty big. Over the course of three days, we’re inviting people to write down their thoughts or dreams or anxieties and to put them into the box anonymously. From there we’re going to collect all the thoughts up and then we’re going to pick out some stand out ones that we think could be used to make a response piece. So basically whatever is written on the page will be turned into a piece of art by a list of artists who are giving their time for free.

“While the focus is mental health, we also want to give some Irish creatives the chance to exhibit their work. There’s great talent out there that sometimes gets overshadowed by other things. We want to give people a chance to show what they can do.”

The work, along with all thoughts posted in the box, will be exhibited over four floors in the Temple Bar Gallery from the 14th to 16th May. All proceeds from the sale of the art will go to Aware, a national charity that provides support around depression.

According to Aware’s website, one in ten people in Ireland will suffer from depression at some point in their lives. The results can be devastating. While figures for death by suicide appear to be down slightly since the 2011 peak of 554, the numbers of people taking their own lives are still alarmingly high. Men are five times more likely to commit suicide than women and while overall suicide rates are below the European Union average, rates among teenage girls is higher in Ireland than any EU state, while the rate among young Irish males is the second highest.

“Primarily, we’re trying to shed light on everyday mental health which we think is really underplayed,” says Rebecca. “It is doesn’t have to be so terribly bad. People can be plagued by niggling thoughts and the like and small regrets and we just want to give people a sense of solace. We want people to see an essence of themselves in the exhibition and by turning the thoughts into art, the person can engage with those thoughts differently. It’s about being able to transform the negative taboo of mental health into something constructive and beautiful.”

If you would like to help finance Peachy Dublin see here.

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