Hauser & Wirth Partners With Hospital Rooms to Brighten British Wards

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Hauser & Wirth will soon hold the first of three annual exhibitions in partnership with UK charity Hospital Rooms. The exhibition Like There Is Hope and I Can Dream of Another World will show at the gallery’s Saville Row space from 19 August to 14 September.

The exhibition title is how one patient interviewed by Hospital Rooms responded to the question, ‘How should an artwork in a mental health hospital make you feel?’ Mark Titchner created a 15-metre-long painting of the phrase for the exhibition.

The show also features works by Harold Offeh and Michelle Williams Gamaker made in collaboration with recipients of mental health services and students at Springfield University Hospital.

Hospital Rooms was founded by artist Tim A Shaw and curator Niahm White in 2016. They were moved to do so after visiting a friend who had been sectioned into a mental health hospital they found cold, clinical, and bleak. They’ve since worked with patients, healthcare workers, and artists such as Anish Kapoor, Sonia Boyce, Assemble, Anthony Gormley and Tschabalala Self to produce artworks tailor-made for British hospitals.

‘We have been long-standing supporters of Hospital Rooms, with both Niamh and Tim alumni of the gallery,’ said Hauser & Wirth partner Neil Wenman. ‘Their extraordinary passion and generosity is very close to our hearts’.

Over the past three years, Hauser & Wirth has raised over £200,000 for the non-profit through annual charity auctions. Over the next three years, they’re aiming for an additional £1 million.

Hauser & Wirth will hold its fourth annual charity auction for Hospital Rooms at Bonham’s on 14 September. Works by Hauser & Wirth artists Amy Sherald, Pipilotti Rist, Takesada Matsutani, and Thomas J Price will go under the hammer along with works by Julian Opie, Richard Wentworth, Emma Cousin, and Supta Biswas, among others.

Proceeds will go towards an 18-month art programme and series of artworks for the new Rivers Centre at Hellesdon Hospital in Norwich.

‘Having seen the impact of [Hospital Rooms’] work in NHS mental health inpatient units across the country, we firmly believe that art plays an important role in changing lives and providing joy and dignity to stimulate and heal,’ Wenman said. —[O]

Main image: Richard Mark Rawlins for Titian Ward. Photo: Damian Griffiths.