Steve Macleod will donate Black Shuck (pictured) to a charity auction to be held at Hauser & Wirth on 18th June in aid of the charity Hospital Rooms.
Artworks have been generously donated for auction by:
Aimee Parrott, Anish Kapoor, Athier, Bindi Vora, Bob and Roberta Smith, Carl Rowe, Cerith Wyn Evans, Charley Peters, Gordon Cheung, Grenville Davey, Hannah Brown, Harold Offeh, Jessica Voorsanger, Jon Emmony, Jonathan Trayte, Lothar Götz, Lucy Stein, Mark Power, Mark Titchner, Michael O'Reilly, Nancy Milner, Nengi Omuku, Nina Royle, Paresha Amin, Rachael Champion, Rebecca Byrne, Richard Wentworth, Ryan Mosley, Sara Berman, Sara Naim, Sikelela Owen, Sophie Clements, Steve Macleod, Sutapa Biswas, Susie Hamilton, Tal Rosner, Tamsin Relly, Tim A Shaw, Yukako Shibata
About Hospital Rooms: by co-founders Niamh White & Tim A Shaw
In 2015, a close friend of ours was sectioned under the Mental Health Act after a suicide attempt. She was admitted to a locked mental health unit in an NHS hospital where she was required to stay until care staff were confident she was well enough to go home.
On visiting her, we were shocked to find that the environment that she was in at this very distressing time was not only cold and clinical, but also dilapidated and run down. We went on to research the issue and found that the Care Quality Commission says that locked and secure mental health units are ‘inadequate’ and the NHS Five Year Forward View says they are ‘not conducive to recovery.’
We also spoke to many patients, carers and staff who described these spaces as being ‘like prison’, ‘horrible’, ‘hostile’ or ‘like being in a vacuum’.
Having worked in the arts for 10 and 8 years each respectively, we felt that we had the skills and contacts to make a change and we co- founded the arts and mental health charity Hospital Rooms. We now bring extraordinary art and creative activity to some of the most vulnerable and marginalised members of society.
Hospital Rooms commissions world class artists such as Anish Kapoor and Mark Titchner to work with mental health patients and staff to create museum quality and compliant art for these spaces. We do this by programming series of tailored workshops through which artists and unit communities can collaborate. We make challenging clinical environments imaginative, thoughtful and rejuvenative.
Hospital Rooms has undertaken 9 projects in a range of mental health settings across the life span, from mother and baby services, to adolescent mental health, to acute and forensic adult care and older people’s mental health. The units look after people with severe and enduring mental health conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, mania, psychosis, personality disorders and dementia.
Our work has been noted for Outstanding practice by the CQC for both the environments created and patient involvement and we won the Quality Improvement Project of the Year 2018 award from the National Association of Psychiatric Intensive Care Units.
NHS Trusts are now contacting us on a weekly basis to request projects and transform their spaces and at our current pace, the work amounts to 11 years. It is imperative that we scale up our reach and capacity, while keeping a strong focus on quality and service user involvement. Without Hospital Rooms, mental health hospitals will remain spaces that offer little comfort, and the quality of care and patients’ well- being will be compromised.
Our very special fundraiser at Hauser and Wirth Savile Row is a unique opportunity to join us in our mission to provide all people in mental health hospitals with the opportunity to engage with and be inspired by the arts.
