Madeleine Marg is an artist from Scotland. Her work is predominantly sculptural, but she engages in a range of mediums, including glass, casting, ceramics, video, and sound. Her sculpture ‘Alarm Bells’ addresses the stigma surrounding mental health, drawing on her personal experience with anxiety disorders.
Through casting an alarm clock in glass, she regenerates the object as a personal embodiment of her anxiety. The transparency of the glass represents the difficulty of recognising mental health conditions that present differently from those that are widely known. Through the use of rotating time, Marg expresses the consistent cyclical repetition of her own intrusive thoughts.
The imagery and title, reference her tendency toward catastrophising and fixating on worst-case scenarios and becoming convinced they are imminent, when they are not. The alarm clock will never detonate, yet it holds a constant sense of tension and anticipation. It is this uncertainty whether something will or will not happen, that reflects the ongoing psychological strain of her intrusive thoughts.
By drawing on her own experience, Marg aims to challenge the stigma surrounding mental health and expand understanding of anxiety disorders beyond their visible or simplified forms. ‘Alarm Bells’ invites reflection on how we recognise illness, and calls for greater empathy toward the complex realities of the mind.