Item #39563 Trepanation for the National Health. Special Project Exhibition at P.S.I. Amanda FEILDING.
Trepanation for the National Health. Special Project Exhibition at P.S.I.
Trepanation for the National Health. Special Project Exhibition at P.S.I.

63.

FEILDING, Amanda.

Trepanation for the National Health. Special Project Exhibition at P.S.I.

Long Island City, NY: Project Studios One, Institute for Art and Urban Resources, 1978.

Folded booklet, illustrated with a colour film still. Prints Feilding’s “Artist’s Statement” (“I consider my trepanation itself the best artwork I have done, since it permanently expanded my consciousness”), with inserts loosely enclosed (three separate copies) announcing the premiere of her film “Heartbeat in the Brain” at the Suydam Gallery in New York city (during which several audience members fainted, “dropping off their seats one by one like ripe plums”, as one reviewer noted), and the ICA in London.

The Suydam Gallery announcement card acknowledges support for the screening from 27 individuals, among them Robert Mapplethorpe, Lucinda Lambton, and Andy Warhol.

Feilding met Bart Huges in 1966 and lived with Joe Mellen from the late 1960s. In 1970 she performed trepanation on herself, an experience filmed by Mellen for “Heartbeat in the Brain”, and in 1979 and 1983 Feilding ran for Parliament in her local constituency of Chelsea on the platform ‘Trepanation for the National Health’, advocating research into its potential benefits and provision of the procedure by the NHS.

Near Fine.

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