Stella Brennan

No Stairway (2006)

2 min 32 secSingle channel / Digital Video / Colour / Sound

Inspired by suffragist Charlotte Perkins-Gillman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, in which an increasingly psychotic invalid entwines herself in the art nouveau extravagances of her sickroom wallpaper.

The voice-over is from French poet Henri Michaux’s book The Miserable Miracle (1956), documenting his experiments with mescaline. No Stairway is tremulous and cyclical—the doors of perception never open. The viewer is trapped, surrounded by garish kaleidoscopic pattern.

Other works by Stella Brennan

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