DJ Simpson

Check, Double Check, 2004

Laminate and birch plywood
West Wing, St Bartholomew’s Hospital

DJ Simpson makes his work by ‘drawing’ directly onto wooden panels with a carpenter’s router cutter, to create beautiful, spontaneous sculptural reliefs that invite the viewer to touch them. In the main waiting room, Simpson has created three large-scale panelled walls that seek to work with the historic features of the building. As DJ Simpson explains, ‘the walls I’m using have a format that might make you think of a traditional landscape. It’s a common human game to project an image on to something abstract but there are all kinds of spaces to imagine other than the picturesque’.

Simpson was born in Lancaster in 1966 and educated at Reading University and Goldsmiths College, London

The award winning Barts Heath Breast Care Centre is considered a pioneering example of public art commissioning in a healthcare setting. A series of site specific commissions from leading artists are integrated with the architecture, to produce moments of contemplation; creating spaces that positively encourage distraction and discussion.

The art programme was curated for Vital Arts by Theresa Bergne of Field Art Projects, and took as its starting point the feedback that visitors would rather be ‘anywhere, but here.’ To this end, the expression of landscape explored by all the art installed offers an element of ‘transportation,’ offering viewers the opportunity to think about being ‘somewhere else,’ if only in mind.