Lindsey Mendick: Growing Pains

A brand new commission for Jupiter+ Dundee

OPENING SEPTEMBER 13TH 2025

Jupiter+ is an ambitious off-site programme that brings world-class art to high streets across Scotland. In 2025/26, now in its fourth iteration, the project will take place in Dundee, following previous editions in Perth, Ayr, and Paisley.

This year, artist Lindsey Mendick presents Growing Pains, a new site-specific installation comprising ceramic sculptures, stained glass, office furniture and a film, set in an abandoned estate agent’s office. Referencing her teenage years, Mendick transforms the space into a haunting, immersive experience that explores the uncertainty, awkwardness, and societal expectations surrounding adolescence. The work will be shown at 15 Reform Street, Dundee.

Mendick, who grew up in north London, recalls the unspoken social hierarchies that shaped her upbringing. Using the analogy of an estate agency, the artist reflects on how these businesses relentlessly tout aspirational lifestyles and the insidious feeling that the grass is always greener.

Her work probes our tendency, as adults, to attribute the strains we experience to our parents, anxious about meeting their expectations. Yet, we seldom consider how we demanded so much from them as children. We yearned for the right trainers, the latest smartphones, and had an insatiable appetite for the newest technologies, trends, and designer labels.

Assembled on a spiralling desk that references the often cruel loop of teenagehood, Growing Pains features 8 Alice-in-Wonderland-style ceramic dolls’ houses that burst open with teenage figures erupting from within. Each house represents a different milestone of growing up in the 00s — long before the influences of social media and surfing the web — from wearing braces to getting your first cell phone, or getting tipsy on Bacardi Breezers and wearing the must-have TN trainers and hoodies of the time. In the accompanying film you couldn’t pay me to go back, Mendick revisits Muswell Hill for the first time in 15 years. The installation captures the surreal pressures that emerge at the threshold of adulthood, underlining the tension between a yearning for parental acceptance and the simultaneous urge to reject it.

About Lindsey Mendick

Lindsey Mendick is known for her work in ceramics, embedding her sculptures within installations that include stained glass, film, furniture, large stage sets and performance. Her intricate multimedia installation in Dundee will include her meticulously crafted and richly glazed ceramics, stained glass and audio. Mendick also has shown work at Jupiter Artland, which won the prestigious Sky Arts Award in 2023.

https://lindseymendick.com

Photography by Elissa Cray