Alexa de Ferranti

Since 2006, Alexa de Ferranti has been creating a visual companion to The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM IV and V). Informed by personal experience, the approximately 150 works on paper are an attempt to explore and mediate the implications of clinical language in relation to the mind and imagination. They form part of an ongoing body of work.

The drawings are made predominantly with ink, pencil and pen on paper, sometimes using collage, cut-outs and stencils.

The first edition of the DSM, published in 1952, contained diagnostic criteria for 106 mental disorders and evolved from collecting census and psychiatric hospital statistics and from a US Army manual. Recently published in its fifth edition and containing over 300 disorders, the DSM is one of the most frequently used and cited clinical reference manuals for mental health professionals worldwide.

Alexa de Ferranti is director of Lower Hewood Farm, a 45 acre certified organic small-holding producing meat, vegetables and fruit for sale locally and for the farm’s permanent residents and visitors. A residency program and programme of events for artists, writers, researchers, farmers, and members of the public interested in exploring the relationship between farming and the wider culture. Lower Hewood Farm is accessible to the public every Thursday via the farm kiosk and The Survival Library, The Survival Library, a project developed by Standart Thinking contains material ranging from historical agriculture textbooks, to psychoanalysis, to artists books. The library is open to the public every Thursday afternoon or by appointment.

www.lowerhewoodfarm.org

Alexa de Ferranti is a member of Playback (Research Environment) – consisting of members of the Solent BA (Hons) Fine Art staff team who meet regularly throughout the year to discuss aspects of practice and the institutional experience. The term ‘playback’ came from discussions around the feedback loop of teaching and pedagogy, by inverting the usual student-tutor roles in order to explore the notion that for all of us, learning is an integral part of creative practice. As tutors we encourage risk-taking, experimentation, vulnerability and playfulness, to celebrate failure as an integral part of process, and to expand definitions of work and play – and as artists, we aim to put ourselves in the position we ask of our students.

Playback will act in part as an arena for discussion about Fine Art education and our place within it, drawing attention to the diversity of disciplines practiced by the team, and the variety of ways in which such work intersects with wider contemporary practice. As well as being a platform for staff development, the show aims to ignite interest in the Fine Art course and more generally in Southampton Solent University as a centre for creative enterprise and originality.

Alexa de Ferranti is a founder member of Peacock Projects, an artist-run studio and project space at Pullen’s Yard, a group of Victorian live-work yards in Elephant and Castle in London, along with Jules Clarke, Iben la Cour, Dafna Talmor and Emma Tod. We curate group shows, host talks and workshops and take part in the Pullen’s Yard Open Studios events twice a year.

- Lower Hewood Farm. - 'The Illustrated DSM V' - publication.