Video Interviews
Interview The Wick x Hospital Rooms | Digital Art School, Hauser & Wirth
In conversation
Tim A Shaw, Sara Berman and Sutapa Biswas
In conversation
Tim A Shaw, Sara Berman and Sutapa Biswas
The Culturally Curious are invited to participate in a groundbreaking exhibition raising funds for mental health care centres across the UK. Hospital Rooms’ Digital Art School at Hauser & Wirth features over 2000 A4 drawings from patients, staff and exhibition visitors – surrounded by artworks from leading contemporary figures across the art world. Co-Founders Tim Shaw and Niamh White introduced Hospital Rooms in 2016, bringing art materials and workshops to healthcare centres nationwide in the years that followed.
The exhibition will culminate in a live fundraising auction at Hauser & Wirth London, hosted in partnership with Bonhams, on Wednesday 11 September 2024, and an online-only auction at Bonhams.com on Thursday 12 September 2024. Both auctions will showcase works donated by artists across the UK, including Do Ho Suh, Rana Begum, Sutapa Biswas, Peter Liversidge and many more. These works have been shown in the gallery throughout the duration of the exhibition.
Over the past two years, Hospital Rooms and Hauser & Wirth have jointly raised over £725,000, helping the charity to deliver a series of ambitious new projects in NHS mental health hospitals across the UK. The partnership has helped to fund transformational creative projects to bring contemporary art and architecture to Springfield Hospital in Tooting, Hellesdon Hospital in Norwich and Sandwell’s Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service, as well as launching the Digital Art School in 750 mental health sites across the UK.
Hospital Rooms work to benefit people with Severe Mental Illness (SMI) diagnoses, commissioning leading artists such as Hurvin Anderson, Julian Opie, Sonia Boyce, Anish Kapoor and Chantal Joffe to transform in-patient units and secure wards, where opportunities to experience and participate in art are significantly reduced. The charity also work in mother and baby, out-patient and young people’s units, recognizing both the broad range of people whose lives are touched by mental illness, and the transformative potential of creative programs and vibrant care environments—for patients, their loved ones and staff.
The organisation was founded when a friend of artist Tim Shaw and curator Niamh White was sectioned and admitted to a NHS mental health hospital. On visiting her, they were shocked to find the hospital environment was cold and clinical at a time when she was so vulnerable. Having both worked in the arts for 10 years, Shaw and White felt they had the skills and community to be able to transform these spaces with unique and site specific artworks. Hospital Rooms envisions a new world where abundant and meaningful creative opportunities are readily accessible to people with severe and enduring mental health diagnoses, and where mental health hospital environments are inventive cultural spaces offering solace, comfort and dignity. Since 2016, Hospital Rooms has undertaken a number of acclaimed projects, completed in some of the most challenging mental health settings. A roster of artists is carefully selected for each Hospital Rooms’ project according to the needs of each community.
All proceeds from the auctions will sustain the year ahead for Hospital Rooms, with plans to deliver new projects to transform mental health care units in cities from London to Bristol, Norwich, Wakefield and beyond. The auction runs live at Bonhams.com on 11 September 2024.
The exhibition will culminate in a live fundraising auction at Hauser & Wirth London, hosted in partnership with Bonhams, on Wednesday 11 September 2024, and an online-only auction at Bonhams.com on Thursday 12 September 2024. Both auctions will showcase works donated by artists across the UK, including Do Ho Suh, Rana Begum, Sutapa Biswas, Peter Liversidge and many more. These works have been shown in the gallery throughout the duration of the exhibition.
Over the past two years, Hospital Rooms and Hauser & Wirth have jointly raised over £725,000, helping the charity to deliver a series of ambitious new projects in NHS mental health hospitals across the UK. The partnership has helped to fund transformational creative projects to bring contemporary art and architecture to Springfield Hospital in Tooting, Hellesdon Hospital in Norwich and Sandwell’s Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service, as well as launching the Digital Art School in 750 mental health sites across the UK.
Hospital Rooms work to benefit people with Severe Mental Illness (SMI) diagnoses, commissioning leading artists such as Hurvin Anderson, Julian Opie, Sonia Boyce, Anish Kapoor and Chantal Joffe to transform in-patient units and secure wards, where opportunities to experience and participate in art are significantly reduced. The charity also work in mother and baby, out-patient and young people’s units, recognizing both the broad range of people whose lives are touched by mental illness, and the transformative potential of creative programs and vibrant care environments—for patients, their loved ones and staff.
The organisation was founded when a friend of artist Tim Shaw and curator Niamh White was sectioned and admitted to a NHS mental health hospital. On visiting her, they were shocked to find the hospital environment was cold and clinical at a time when she was so vulnerable. Having both worked in the arts for 10 years, Shaw and White felt they had the skills and community to be able to transform these spaces with unique and site specific artworks. Hospital Rooms envisions a new world where abundant and meaningful creative opportunities are readily accessible to people with severe and enduring mental health diagnoses, and where mental health hospital environments are inventive cultural spaces offering solace, comfort and dignity. Since 2016, Hospital Rooms has undertaken a number of acclaimed projects, completed in some of the most challenging mental health settings. A roster of artists is carefully selected for each Hospital Rooms’ project according to the needs of each community.
All proceeds from the auctions will sustain the year ahead for Hospital Rooms, with plans to deliver new projects to transform mental health care units in cities from London to Bristol, Norwich, Wakefield and beyond. The auction runs live at Bonhams.com on 11 September 2024.
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