Exhibition: Rachel Goodyear
Sam Taylor-Johnson, David Beckham ('David'), 2004, at Whipps Cross Hospital. Photography David Parry
Barbara Sampson
Flowerscape
September – December 2007
Outpatients Hall, St Bartholomew’s Hospital, West Smithfield
A collection of drawings conveying a personal experience of having cancer will be on display in The Royal London Hospital’s main corridor from 29th May until 1st September 2008. Manchester-based artist Rachel Goodyear created the drawings while she was undergoing six months of chemotherapy in her home city.
The artist translated her experiences into an imaginary woodland world delicately depicted in pencil. Limited edition prints signed by her are also for sale. Proceeds will go to support Cancer Research UK, and Vital Arts’ integrated arts programme across Barts and The London NHS Trust.
She explains:
“I think it is really important that the exhibition will bring my drawings to the wide audience of people walking down a hospital corridor. The sale of limited edition prints for the charities is also a way of making the art more available to people while also helping future treatment.
Illness and treatment are very personal experiences and each person responds in their own unique way. My work was created during chemotherapy but is a reflection of the whole experience of the cancer journey. It is a unique piece of work in that it is artist and patient rolled into one.
Early spring 2006 I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I was 27. From then on I felt my life was catapulted into a world of blurred reality and fiction: as a patient I was experiencing the illness and treatment, and as an artist I was standing outside of myself and observing what was happening.”
The collection of 31 drawings, titled ‘Unable To Stop Because They Were Too Close To The Line’, are displayed for visitors to The Royal London Hospital to view along the West Wing of the main corridor. The collection was originally commissioned by LIME, the arts organisation based within Central Manchester & Manchester NHS Trust for its permanent home in Fairfield Hospital.
