Barts 900 x Vital Arts
On Saturday 25 March 2023, St Bartholomew’s Hospital and St Bartholomew the Great church turned 900 years old. To mark nine centuries since the foundation of these iconic institutions, we launched a series of arts programmes and projects throughout the year.
Find out more about the different artists and arts professionals we have partnered with below.
Limina Collective at Barts
Vital Arts are partnering with Limina Collective, specialists in combining mindfulness with art engagement, for a new project at Barts Hospital.
Limina Collective have carefully selected a beautiful Darren Almond piece from the photographic installation produced for the Radiography Department. Running throughout his work is a reflection on time, duration and memory. For these images, the artist has travelled far and wide to remote geographical areas. These pictures are taken in the middle of the night, using only the full moon as a source of light, and an extended time exposure. Entitled Fullmoons, these meditative and evocative photographs are filled with a strange and frozen beauty. Almond’s images expose what happens when you give landscape longer to express itself.
Founded by Karly Allen and Lucia van der Drift in 2018, Limina Collective develop audio recordings and workshops that encourage sustained observation and a deeper connection with art, whilst feeling the wellbeing benefits of mindfulness. They have produced projects for national museums and galleries across the UK, and are excited to bring these practices, for the first time, to the hospital environment.
Darren Almond, Fullmoon@Kaanal2001 (Netherlands), C-type photographic print; ©Darren Almond
Looking at art with mindfulness can have a calming, pleasing effect on the mind, and improve wellbeing.
Coming into close connection with an artwork, even for a few minutes, can offer a rest from the thoughts that occupy us.
Allow yourself to be immersed in this landscape photograph, guided by the words in this 4-minute mindfulness practice.
We invite you to try this:
Find a comfortable place to stand or sit where you can see the artwork, and scan the QR code to listen.
Listen on your phone, with headphones if you have them.
Artist In Residence: Verity-Jane Keefe
Verity-Jane Keefe will be our artist-in-residence at Barts Hospital in 2023. Eavesdropping, talking, listening, and looking, Keefe will be capturing a slice of Barts and its community as it is, in 2023, and creating an artwork in response.
The artist’s work asks: If the buildings could speak what might they say? What secrets do they hold? What stolen words are hidden in the layers of paint and linoleum? What whispers and overheard conversations have been held here?
Pablo Bronstein edition
Staff and Stethoscope, 2023
£250*
EDITION SIZE: 50 with 5 A/P (signed, dated and numbered by the artist, recto)
FINISHING: Giclée print, archival ink on Hahnemühle German etching paper, 310gsm
DIMENSIONS: 36.4 x 50 cm
*(unframed) plus post and packaging
Barts Health NHS staff recieve a 10% discount on all editions
Vital Arts is thrilled to announce our new limited edition print by Pablo Bronstein, commissioned in honour of Barts 900.
Staff and Stethoscope explores the history of medicine, and of Barts itself. The artist draws influence from the magnificent Hogarth Staircase in the hospital’s North Wing, completed in 1737. The work also references a major architectural feature at Barts, the 1701 gatehouse, which was commissioned to commemorate the hospital being spared from dissolution by King Henry VIII. Combining the Rod of Asclepius–the symbol of healing and medicinal arts dating back to ancient Greece–with the contemporary stethoscope, this edition is a salute to the hospital’s outstanding medical staff, both past and present.
Proceeds from the sale of this print will support the Brent Centre for Young People and the Vital Arts programme.
Pablo Bronstein also offered to create a set of ten unique colourways of Staff and Stethoscope, in addition to the standard edition of 30.
Pablo Bronstein: Staff and Stethoscope - unique colourways, 2023, giclée print, archival ink on Hahnemühle German etching paper, 310gsm
MORE INFO ON THE UNIQUE COLOURWAYS
If you are interested in purchasing any of these prints, please email vitalarts.bartshealth@nhs.net
