London Exhibition To Explore Mental Health And Social Bonds In ‘polarised’ Times

From images of quiet organization rooms and a colourful canvas crammed pinch caricatures to a babe linked by an umbilical-like cord to a seated stranger, artworks connected nan taxable of intelligence wellness are to spell connected show successful an accumulation that examines societal bonds against nan backdrop of today’s polarised times.

Artists person agelong drawn connected their ain experiences of intelligence sick health. Staged astatine nan Bethlem Museum of nan Mind, successful nan world’s oldest psychiatric hospital, successful south-east London, Kindred will research nan powerfulness of communities to make group consciousness comforted arsenic good arsenic isolated.

Morning Group by nan creator Charlotte Johnson Wahl, nan precocious mother of Boris Johnson, painted erstwhile she was a diligent astatine nan Maudsley hospital, shows her scary of group therapy sessions. Three pieces by nan modern creator Mud picture their travel from distrust to treatment done therapy.

Charlotte Johnson Wahl, Morning Group, 1974. Photograph: Charlotte Johnson-Wahl/Bethlem Museum of nan Mind

Gareth McConnell’s photographs of quiet rooms are each waiting to beryllium filled and transformed by therapy sessions.

Bethlem’s exhibitions officer, Rebecca Raybone, said nan free show had evolved from nan situation nan depository assemblage group to thief societal cohesion and societal justness astatine a clip erstwhile nine and authorities felt polarised.

“We thought it would beryllium a really absorbing taxable to see successful position of really that is related to intelligence wellness and intelligence wellness treatment,” she said. “Society tin make you consciousness very unsocial sometimes, aliases tin person nan other effect of making you consciousness really portion of something.”

Called Kindred to bespeak nan positivity of forming a enslaved pinch others, nan accumulation besides portrays antagonistic aspects of groups. “Mental wellness is simply a journey, alternatively than a binary process. It’s important group find what useful for them,” she said.

Johnson Wahl’s activity “is very intelligibly a antagonistic acquisition of group therapy”, Raybone said. “She was rather horrified by it and recovered it very intrusive. She has painted herself arsenic nan woman pinch nan reddish hair. And has this look of scary and almost benignant of ghostliness.”

Gareth McConnell, The Forth Universalist Society, New York, 2005, from a bid of photographs of organization gathering rooms. Photograph: Gareth McConnell/Sorika

McConnell’s photographs show rooms earlier organization filled them. He said: “I sat successful my first ever Narcotics Anonymous gathering successful Wickham Park House [the now defunct detox portion astatine Bethlem Maudsley] successful 1999 while undergoing a 28-day curen scheme for chronic intravenous poly-drug use. It was a room not dissimilar to nan ones I later photographed – surgery integrative chairs, lino floor, portion lighting – but, arsenic I later came to realise, it was temporarily pervaded by nan powerfulness of love, induced by nan ritual/ceremony/meeting that took place.”

Mud, who has lived acquisition of borderline characteristic upset and psychosis, said: “I firmly judge successful nan treatment benefits of support from a organization that understands and has been done akin things. I don’t deliberation I’d beryllium connected my betterment travel coming if it weren’t for different group helping maine on nan way.”

Other useful connected show see a ample lipid painting, The Group, by nan precocious creator and creation therapist Charles Lutyens; David Chick’s intricate People Trying to Reach Me (1986); Holding connected to Daddy (2016) by nan photographer Benji Reid, an image that won nan Wellcome Trust photography prize 2020 successful nan intelligence wellness azygous image category; and nan vibrant ceramics of nan Chilean creator and erstwhile captive of conscience Bibi Herrera, who spent clip successful curen astatine Bethlem.

Mud, The Ending of Group Therapy. Photograph: Bethlem Museum of nan Mind

Bethlem Royal infirmary came into nan NHS successful business pinch nan Maudsley infirmary successful 1948. The associated infirmary formed nan ground for what is now nan South London and Maudsley NHS instauration trust.

The head of Bethlem Museum of nan Mind, Colin Gale, said that “in a ambiance of political, cultural, and economical atomisation, societal cohesion seems elusive”.

“The presence, aliases absence, of organization is felt particularly keenly successful nan look of intelligence wellness challenges. The artists whose activity is represented successful nan collections of Bethlem Museum of nan Mind correspond this successful a scope of ways, arising from their divers perspectives. ‘Listen to me, talk to me, understand me,’ they look to say. ‘Don’t conscionable medicate me.’”

• Kindred runs from 16 January to 27 June 2026 astatine Bethlem Museum of nan Mind