Our top picks of exhibitions together with cultural spaces and places, both online and in the real world.

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Viewing Hospital Rooms X Anthropologie

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Hospital Rooms X Anthropologie

The brilliant arts and mental health charity Hospital Rooms commissions artworks by such celebrated artists as Julian Opie, Bob and Roberta Smith and Gavin Turk for NHS mental health inpatient units across the UK.

‘We want to ensure people who have severe and enduing mental health conditions are surrounded by beautiful and restorative environments,’ says Hospital Rooms co-founder Niamh White, ‘and have access to creative activities to offer them hope, dignity and a positive view of the future.’

This year Hospital Rooms has partnered with Anthropolgie to further its mission. Like Hospital Rooms, Anthropologie believes in ‘the power of art to move people, to give people a voice and to make the world a better place to be in,’ says White.

In addition to supporting Hospital Room’s Digital Art School — which offers free creative workshops to inpatient mental health units and the general public — Anthropologie has commissioned a work by Susie Hamilton at Askew Ward, Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit in west London. White describes the transformative piece as ‘vibrant, hopeful and filled with the promise of light.’

What’s more, for Mental Health Awareness Week (10-16 May), Anthropologie will donate £1 to Hospital Rooms for every purchase made online or in store, up to a maximum donation of £10,000. Splashing lockdown savings has never felt so good. Will it be a new maxi or watermelon tote?

Viewing ‘A Dark Mind’, Southbank Centre

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A live-streamed screening of A Dark Mind, followed by a talk from its director and producer
Thursday 13 May, 7pm via Southbank Centre.

Available (without the talk and meditation session) on-demand to all ticket holders for seven days after the event

Never has mental health been more in the spotlight. As the world lurched from one lockdown to another, loneliness, burnout and grief, as well as rising anxiety, sleeplessness and stress were thrust centre stage. The positive? We’re talking more openly about it.

Leading the way is A Dark Mind, a documentary which seeks to remove the taboo around mental health in the Black community, challenge stigmas and initiate change. Director and producer Dami Adeyeye interviews six individuals from within the Black community about their experiences and journeys so far, while four Black mental health professionals share their insights. Topics tackled include suicide, depression, bipolar and sexual violence — but importantly, ways of seeking help, advice and support too.

The screening will be followed by a talk with the director and Natalie Creary, programme director for Lambeth-based mental health charity Black Thrive. Ticket holders can also take part in a short meditative session run by mental health practitioner Hari Sewell and the film’s score composer Cephas Azariah.

Viewing Orlanda Broom: Rewild at Grove Square Galleries

The Wick Culture - Installation at Grove Square Galleries © Paul Aitchison

Above Installation at Grove Square Galleries © Paul Aitchison

The Wick Culture - Creep, 2021, Orlanda Broom

Above Creep, 2021, Orlanda Broom

Above Installation at Grove Square Galleries © Paul Aitchison

The Wick Culture - Susquehanna Dreamer, 2021, Orlanda Broom

Above Susquehanna Dreamer, 2021, Orlanda Broom

Above Installation at Grove Square Galleries © Paul Aitchison

Above Creep, 2021, Orlanda Broom

Above Installation at Grove Square Galleries © Paul Aitchison

Above Susquehanna Dreamer, 2021, Orlanda Broom

Orlanda Broom: Rewild
Grove Square Galleries, London
Until 11 June 2021

Mysterious, exotic and ablaze with brilliant colour, the mesmerising floralscapes of British artist Orlanda Broom draw the eye every which way you look. Her highly-saturated imagined visions combine fictional plantlife with abstract organic forms and seem to exist outside of a specific time or place.

In lockdown Broom focused on the more jubilant aspects of her practice, creating a new series of paintings celebrating the natural world.

‘The connection to nature and aspects of escapism have always been a theme but it’s particularly pertinent now as people’s appreciation of being outdoors has grown,’ she says. ‘I’d like my love of nature to come through and engage people to also think about what the future holds… can our planet rewild?’

Currently on display at Grove Square Galleries in Fitzrovia, these buoyant new works offer a colourful escape from our current — dare we say, still-a-little-frazzled — state of being. Hop to it!