London exhibition exploring mental health and social connections in ‘polarized’ times | art

From images of empty community rooms and a colorful canvas filled with caricatures of a baby tied by an umbilical cord to a seated stranger, artworks on the theme of mental health will be featured in an exhibition examining social connections against the backdrop of current polarizing times.

Artists have long drawn on their own experiences with mental ill health. The show was held at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind, in the world’s oldest psychiatric hospital, in south-east London. It will explore the power of communities to make people feel comfortable and isolated.

The morning collage by artist Charlotte Johnson-Wahl, Boris Johnson’s late mother, painted while she was a patient at the Maudsley Hospital, shows her terror of group therapy sessions. Three pieces by contemporary artist Maud depict their journey from mistrust to healing through therapy.

Gareth McConnell’s photographs of empty rooms are waiting to be filled and transformed through therapy sessions.

Rebecca Raybon, Bethlem’s curator of exhibitions, said the free display evolved from a challenge set by the museum sector to help with social cohesion and social justice at a time when society and politics felt polarised.

“We thought it would be a really interesting topic to look at in terms of how this relates to mental health and mental health treatment,” she said. “Community can make you feel very lonely sometimes, or it can have the opposite effect of making you feel part of something.”

Called “Kindred” to reflect the positivity of forming a bond with others, the exhibit also depicts the negative aspects of groups. “Mental health is a journey, not a binary process. It’s important for people to find what works for them,” she said.

Raybon said Johnson and Wall’s work “clearly represents a negative experience in group therapy.” “I was very terrified by it and found it very intrusive. She painted herself as the red-haired lady. She has a look of terror and is almost kind of ghostly.”

McConnell’s photos show the rooms before the community filled them. He said: “I sat in on my first NA meeting at Wickham Park House [the now defunct detox unit at Bethlem Maudsley] In 1999 while undergoing a 28-day treatment plan for chronic intravenous drug abuse. It was a room not unlike the one I photographed later—broken plastic chairs, lino floor, strip lighting—but, as I later realized, it was temporarily permeated by the power of love, brought about by the ritual/ceremony/meeting that had taken place.”

“I firmly believe in the therapeutic benefits of support from a community that understands and is going through similar things,” said Mudd, who has lived experience of borderline personality disorder and psychosis. “I don’t think I would be on my recovery journey today if it weren’t for others helping me along the way.”

Other works on display include a large oil painting titled “Group” by the late artist and art therapist Charles Lutyens; David Chick’s Complicated People Trying to Get to Me (1986); ‘Holding on to Daddy’ (2016) by Benji Reid, the 2020 Wellcome Trust Photography Award winner in the Mental Health Single Portrait category; and vibrant ceramics by Chilean artist and former prisoner of conscience Pepe Herrera, who spent time in therapy in Bethlem.

Bethlem Royal Infirmary joined the NHS in partnership with the Maudsley Hospital in 1948. The combined hospital formed the basis of what is now the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.

“In a climate of political, cultural and economic fragmentation, social cohesion seems elusive,” said Bethlem Mind Museum director Colin Gale.

“The presence or absence of community is particularly felt in the face of mental health challenges. The artists whose work is represented in the Bethlem Museum of the Mind’s collections represent this in many ways, emerging from their diverse perspectives. They seem to be saying: ‘Listen to me, talk to me, understand me. Don’t just treat me.”