Robyn Smith audio file to accompany her installation 'The artist as Patient and Researcher / A conversation with Professor Sukhi Shergill' in the 'Body & Mind: Seen & Unseen' exhibition at The National Centre for Craft and Design, 1 Feb - 6 Sep 2020.

Suffering from psychosis in 1991 Robyn Smith believed she was being experimented on by invisible forces. She describes having physical sensations of being wired up to electricity (a common symptom) and being constantly bombarded with disembodied voices talking about her as if they were observing and judging her responses. She decided at one point that this experimentation was taking place in the future and was passing back to her through many lifetimes. She imagined her brain in a glass jar with wires attached to it. In 2019 whilst in conversation with Prof Sukhi Shergill, as part of a project with by Bethlem Gallery, she was excited to realise she was now in the position of a researcher. She offered to be part of Prof Shergill’s research and when he said she could be wired up to the EEG/TMS machine she said “Fantastic! I have finally come full circle”.
With thanks to Prof. Sukhi Shergill BSc MBBS PhD SFHEA FRCPsych, Professor in Psychiatry and Systems Neuroscience at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, and a Consultant Psychiatrist in the National Psychosis Service at the Maudsley Hospital, part of the South London and Maudsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. People who suffer from treatment-refractory psychosis are referred here from across the UK and Europe.

Robyn Smith: The artist as Patient and Researcher/A conversation with Professor Sukhi Shergill, 2019

Robyn Smith audio file to accompany her installations 'Inside the MRI Scanner', in the 'Body & Mind: Seen & Unseen' exhibition at The National Centre for Craft and Design, 1 Feb - 6 Sep 2020.

As part of her research at Kings College Hospital Robyn Smith was shown a dummy MRI scanner used to acclimatize patients to its sensations and sounds. She recorded the various noises the machine makes whilst in progress and spliced them with recordings of whispering psychotic voices and noises. She did this to express the intense feeling of fear and anxiety experienced when affected by the audible and physical hallucinations of psychosis. Whilst Schizophrenia is not visible in a brain scan, the disembodied voices often experienced in psychosis, are. The brain lights up in exactly the same place as a person listening to speech in reality. Likewise, hallucinations show up in the brain in the same place as a nonpsychotic person who is thinking about speaking and trying to form a story before it has been spoken. 
With thanks to Charlotte Horne and Tess Verneuil Postdoctoral Research Associates, Kings College London Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience,  Department of Psychosis Studies .

Robyn Smith: Inside the MRI Scanner, 2019

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