Some of the world’s greatest artists have been mentally ill – painters like Paterson Ewen, Emily Carr, Adolf Wölfi, Georgia O’Keefe, Henry Darger, William Kurelek, Vincent van Gogh, Lawren Harris and Tom Thomson; musicians including Mozart, Beethoven, Glenn Gould, Sinead O’Connor and Tchaikovsky; and writers like Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Leo Tolstoy. This list is only a sample of the artistic greats from our history that drew some of their energy and inspiration from their illness.

Join practicing artists and theorists of culture and art as they explore timely questions about of art, society and mental illness.

This symposium brings together the do-ers, the thinkers and the topics, setting the historical context of the nexus between madness and art. It also poses the questions, “What’s in a name?”, what are assumptions around mental health and creativity, and how are these ideas informed by language and terminology?