Inspired as a platform for speaking publicly about mental illness, the works are an artistic expression of what it means to live with bipolar disorder.

Conceptually, Ottley's journey into and through psychosis is symbolised by a tree.

Its flowers of ecstasy and fruit of despair have their genesis as a seed hidden deep in the DNA of an unborn child that, soon after the child's birth, sprouts and begins to grow, incrementally skewing his view of the world and marking him as peculiar in the eyes of others.

Images describing the child's budding psychosis are rendered sometimes in pencil, sometimes in paint, but always monochromatically, creating the effect of old photographs and with only the occasional disconcerting flash of colour to suggest the startlement, discomfiture and horror of this illness.

Once the tree becomes all-consuming and psychosis takes over, Ottley turns to full colour.

Points of view plunge and tilt as the images lurch between surrealism and hyperrealism, sometimes lurid, brash and brassy, sometimes mellow and ethereal, portraying in rapid succession the ridiculous, the unsettling and the ghastly.

Every mark and hue has meaning, every character is a mouthpiece, every concept the articulation of a lived moment of madness. It shocks, it disconcerts, it enthrals.

It is Ottley's 'confession', his 'coming out' to the community about a life lived largely in secret due to the stigma that clouds our understanding of mental illness and, in particular, of psychosis.

Join Matt Ottley and curator and founder of Dirt Lane Press, Margrete Lamond for a free musical presentation and informal discussion of The Tree of Ecstasy and Unbearable Sadness on Friday, October 4 from 5:30pm at Orange Regional Gallery.

'Matt Ottley: The Tree of Ecstasy and Unbearable Sadness' is an Orange Regional Gallery exhibition curated by Margrete Lamond to coincide with Mental Health Month.

Works represent a selection of images from an illustrated book for young adult readers to be published by Dirt Lane Press Inc.

Also coming up an exhibition opening with Q & A for Arlo Mountford: Deep Revolt. Friday, September 27. To be opened by by Gina Mobayed, Director Goulburn Regional Art Gallery.

Please join us for a Q & A with Arlo Mountford and Gina Mobayed at 5.30pm prior to the opening from 6pm.