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Jarvis Cocker becomes a life size dress-up doll to explore everything we regret

As Leverhulme artist-in-residence at the University of Sheffield's Department of Psychology, Rachel Genn has researched and created stories for characters in a quasi-institution: The National Facility for the Regulation of Regret (NFRR).

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Two life-sized cardboard dress-up dolls designed by Joanna Walsh, showing figures with drawn features wearing coloured underwear and spotted bodies, displayed in an indoor studio space.

These fictional characters have regret-related disturbances and their stories are narrated by their personal possessions: Lassie Fortune, a body dysmorphic woman who does her own plastic surgery, whose art therapy work (by visual artist Sally Wickenden, and Rachel Genn) is displayed in the main gallery of the NFRR; Karl a gambler crippled by superstition, and Jonny, a middle-aged actor who stalks a famous middle-aged rock musician – think Jarvis Cocker – writing love letters, lyrics, and creating life-sized dress-up dolls, and accompanying costumes.

The dolls were designed by UK-based writer and illustrator Joanna Walsh, and constructed by Square Pebble. Joanna also designed and made an anatomically correct soft mini-doll that sleeps under Jonny's bed.

The installation at Sheffield's Bank Street Arts, which continues until end of March 2015, was set up as Lassie Fortune’s first solo art show, and is the beginning of a larger project. The content from the installation will go on to be used in an interactive documentary, exploring bittersweet regret through the NFRR in ways that reveal unexpected connections between art, literature, music and science, using methods only possible in a digital space.

Via direct submission | Photography by Rachel Smith

Two cardboard cut-out dress-up dolls designed by Joanna Walsh stand against a window in an institutional setting, one depicting a man in sunglasses and casual wear with hand on hip, the other a figure in an orange jacket with arms outstretched
A life-sized dress-up doll dressed in a red jacket and olive trousers lies under a bed frame, with a small anatomically correct soft doll resting on its chest
Two cardboard cut-out dress-up dolls with interchangeable limbs mounted on a bedroom wall above a single bed with white bedding and a red toy bed underneath
Two life-sized cardboard dress-up dolls hanging on white gallery walls above a bed: one in purple and gold disco outfit on left, one in red astronaut suit on right with blue helmet and yellow eyes
Two life-sized paper dress-up dolls mounted on a wall showing outfit options: one wearing a blue blazer and black trousers, the other in a purple jacket and red flared trousers with a guitar
Life-sized cardboard cut-out dress-up doll of a bearded man wearing sunglasses, olive shorts and braces, designed by Joanna Walsh for the NFRR installation at Bank Street Arts Sheffield
A life-sized fabric doll with a red bed lies on a yellow blanket in a sparse room, with a larger bed visible above it
Line drawing of a shirtless figure wearing purple patterned underwear, arms outstretched, printed across multiple sheets of paper on a wooden floor as a life-sized dress-up doll
Life-sized fabric doll depicting a bespectacled man with drawn facial features, wearing a plaid blanket, positioned among books on a shelf
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