Artworks to go on display in January at Bethlem Museum of the Mind, in the world’s oldest psychiatric hospital
From images of empty community rooms and a colourful canvas crammed with caricatures to a baby linked by an umbilical-like cord to a seated stranger, artworks on the subject of mental health are to go on display in an exhibition that examines social bonds against the backdrop of today’s polarised times.
Artists have long drawn on their own experiences of mental ill health. Staged at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind, in the world’s oldest psychiatric hospital, in south-east London, Kindred will explore the power of communities to make people feel comforted as well as isolated.
Morning Group by the artist Charlotte Johnson Wahl, the late mother of Boris Johnson, painted when she was a patient at the Maudsley hospital, shows her horror of group therapy sessions. Three pieces by the contemporary artist Mud depict their journey from distrust to healing through therapy.
Gareth McConnell’s photographs of empty rooms are all waiting to be filled and transformed by therapy sessions.
