Works by Renee Sutton, Untitled #1-8, 1959, gouache on paper, 330 × 420mm each.

Record of Institutional Life – Renee Sutton

“Renee Sutton was the only artist from the Cunningham Dax Collection whose permission we were able to obtain,” noted the curator, a statement that landed heavily between us during a brief conversation across the room from Sutton’s work. The comment underscored the ethical complexities surrounding the exhibition of historical patient artworks. Butler spoke of approaching the wider collection with a deep sense of caution and responsibility, conscious that many of the works were created by artists who may never have intended their deeply personal expressions to be publicly viewed.

Earlier that evening, while viewing Sutton’s work, I struck up a conversation with a woman standing beside me, who shared her own connection to the former Larundel psychiatric hospital where Sutton had resided in the late 1950s. As she spoke, I could see the memory return vividly in her expression, recalling going there as a child to visit a relative. I remarked on how unusual it must have been to bring a curious young child into such an environment, where questions surely lingered unspoken. Looking toward Sutton’s paintings, she opened to me as a stranger, speaking softly and discussing how, for some families, institutional care felt like the only available option. She also remembered the art program fondly, recognising in Sutton’s works the same environment that had offered moments of structure, creativity, and connection for her loved one. This encounter outside the artwork mirrored the exhibition’s broader concerns of how stories connected to psychiatric institutions are carried by individuals, families, and communities. For creative arts therapists, Sutton’s work invites consideration of relational ethics, not only in how artworks are witnessed, but in how they are held responsibly.

Like many patients within these programs, Sutton was given only one size of paper, a restricted palette of gouache colours, minimal instruction, and a room intentionally stripped of visual stimulation. Within these limitations, she produced an extraordinary body of work. Sutton meticulously documented her life through more than 200 artworks now held within the Cunningham Dax Collection. Her paintings, alongside letters addressed to Cunningham Dax, offer an intimate account of her experiences within psychiatric hospitals, community art groups, and private creative practice.

NEG and who decides what art means

Within the darkened back room, illuminated partly by the glow of an illustrated audiovisual talk by Cunningham Dax, sits an undated, untitled charcoal work on paper by artist NEG. NEG, who has experienced mental health issues since the age of nine and later participated in the Prahran Mission’s Second Story program, encountered her own work unexpectedly when it appeared in a collection displayed at a local library. A doctor she had been seeing for many years had helped establish the collection, and she was surprised to discover a reproduction of her drawing included in the catalogue alongside a diagnostic interpretation of the image.

The drawing featured multiple heads, which had been interpreted by her doctor, yet the real explanation behind the composition was remarkably ordinary. A support worker had shown NEG how to draw heads that day and, mindful of conserving limited art materials, she decided it would be wasteful to use an entire sheet of A3 paper for only one drawing. The repetition was not symbolic – it was practical.

This moment highlights the importance of approaching creative expression with curiosity rather than assumption. Within creative arts therapy, it reminds us to remain in the phenomenological practice of epoché, suspending our assumptions, interpretations, and expectations in order to remain receptive to another person’s lived experience (Spinelli, 2005).

Positioning NEG’s drawing beside the looping image and voice of Cunningham Dax is particularly pointed. This juxtaposition subtly exposes the limitations and assumptions of psychiatric interpretation. The work demonstrates the risk of collapsing artistic expression into clinical symbolism, reminding practitioners that the maker’s own relationship with their work must remain central.

NEG, Untitled, 2009, charcoal on paper, 590 × 790mm.

Reclaiming the Archive – Jenna Lee

I was fortunate to catch up with Jenna Lee as the gallery closed for the day and the last of the guests made their way out of the exhibition. A Saltwater woman whose cultural identity and connection to the sea are deeply rooted in her heritage, Jenna Lee is of mixed Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Anglo-Australian ancestry. Lee has several works in the exhibition, with a practice deeply engaged with archives, colonial histories, and the ways First Nations stories have been recorded, interpreted, and often erased.

In conversation, Lee spoke candidly about the discomfort that accompanied the making of her series Archival Survival, after Banks (2026), situated within the broader context of the Dax Centre’s history, and the tension of engaging with this deeply personal subject. Lee’s insistence on maintaining boundaries between artist, artwork, and audience reflects broader creative arts therapy concerns around disclosure, consent, and ownership of personal narratives, positioning creative works as relational and ethically situated rather than purely personal artefacts (Knill et al., 2005).

Employing the archival Solander box, a container historically associated with colonial systems of collection, classification, and preservation, Lee transforms the archive into both vessel and metaphor. She makes painstaking cut-paper reconstructions and includes tools drawn from her own studio practice, such as a bone folder, knife, ruler, tweezers, and spool of linen thread, positioned as instruments of survival within and against the archive.

Beneath the finished works lies the culmination of many hours spent in dialogue with Butler in his curatorial role, thoughtfully shaping how these pieces would communicate their layered histories while preserving the personal boundaries that remain important to Lee. She challenges viewers to consider not only what archives preserve, but also what they conceal, exclude, and leave unresolved.

Recovering Art, guest curated by Andy Butler, is showing at The Dax Centre from 15 May to 18 December 2026.

The exhibition is open Wednesday to Friday, 11:00am to 3:30pm, at 30 Royal Parade, Parkville, Naarm Melbourne.