Have you tried... shutting up, mate?: perspectives on chronic pain and illness is a text-based, textile, projection project focusing on the experiences of young people living with chronic pain/illness/disability, by Madeleine Cleeve Gerkens, with Daniella Raniti. 

Subverting the all-too-common catch-cry of the able-bodied through the laborious textile practice of embroidery, Have you tried... shutting up, mate?: perspectives on chronic pain and illness challenges public perception of what it’s like to be a young person living with chronic health issues in our capitalist society.

A 1.5Mx1.5M piece of material was embroidered over 70 hours with quotes from interviews undertaken with disabled young people, quotes from medical research into the effects of chronic pain on the brain/body, as well as a selection of naive misconceptions from able-bodied people about what it’s like to live with disability.  By patchworking these three perspectives, the lived experiences of these young people are highlighted.

The projection documents the process of this embroidery, focusing on the physicality of the process. As the artist experiences chronic pain due to an invisible disability, the laborious act of this embroidery elicits elements of the pain explored in the quotes it depicts. Have you tried... shutting up, mate?: perspectives on chronic pain and illness shows both the toll the ignorance of the abled can take on disabled bodies and the effort/pain that goes into educating people about disabled lived experiences.

Have you tried... shutting up, mate?: perspectives on chronic pain and illness is part of the Yarra City Arts Peel Street Park Projection Program.