And all around me, my gathered star

About Hospital Rooms
The charity Hospital Rooms was founded when a friend of artist Tim A 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.

‘As long-time supporters of Hospital Rooms, we have witnessed first-hand the extraordinary impact of their work in changing lives across NHS mental health inpatient units across the country.’—Neil Wenman, Global Creative Director & Partner

Mural by Sutapa Biswas

In 2023, Hospital Rooms completed our most ambitious project to date in partnership with South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust. As part of the development of two new mental health facilities at Springfield University Hospital, we commissioned 20 major artworks to transform how the hospital wards are experienced by patients, service users and staff. Hospital Rooms are nominating 'And all around me, my gathered star' by British Asian multidisciplinary artist Sutapa Biswas for the prize of Art Installation of the Year. Biswas has exhibited at the ICA, Hayward Gallery, BALTIC Contemporary amongst others and her work is held in numerous collections including the TATE Collections and Arts Council England. The artwork is a 65m2 mural in an atrium of the new hospital, hand-painted and applied by the artist. It meets all the criteria for excellence in artistic vision, innovative therapeutic environments, good integration into the project, and collaborative works. Additionally, the installation demonstrates a strong commitment to good environmental practice, using sustainable materials such as Graphenstone paint (an eco-friendly paint made from lime and graphene that absorbs carbon from the atmosphere and free from volatile organic compounds and formaldehyde). The artwork is well integrated with the project and its environment. It was produced in consultation with service users and inspired by their workshops in inpatient wards. Taking inspiration from Giotto’s painting of a night sky on the ceiling of The Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy, workshop participants were encouraged to reimagine their own personal constellations using watercolours and thinking about the cosmological world as a metaphor for the space of dreaming. The letters T,F,N,S,M,A featured in the artwork are the initials of the participants who were in Biswas’ workshop, acknowledging their influence on the development of the work. The distinctive silver and gold leaf, used in combination with paint, references the classical techniques featured in The Scrovegni Chapel as well as the gold and silver elements used during the workshops. The artwork’s visibly hand-made elements humanises the vast white and otherwise clinical atrium space and offers an area for reflection and contemplation. Sutapa Biswas’ “And all around me, my gathered star” for Springfield University Hospital is an outstanding example of how art can transform mental health spaces with unique and site-specific artworks from world-class artists.

https://www.designinmentalhealth.com/sponsor/mural-by-sutapa-biswas-at-springfield-university-hospital-london/