An Ecology of Mind brings together five artists with an interest in the complex relationships that connect art, ecology and health.

About this event

Recent research has demonstrated how our mental health is positively influenced by access to green spaces, but there has been a centuries-old association between our inner and outer ‘natures’.

The Gallery site itself reflects changes in attitudes at the turn of the last century: the hospital moved out the city at a time when gardens and parks began to be an integral part of treatment. In line with new thinking about the influence of the environment on what would now be called ‘wellbeing’, residents were given access to nature and fresh air, and the possibility of engaging in therapeutic work.

The artists selected for the exhibition respond to these themes from singular perspectives. Some deliberately seek solace in the outside world and non-human modes of being. Others, compelled by the pandemic to turn inwards, find worlds within themselves. All of the artists see nature as a resource – for images and metaphors, but also more directly as a source of material for forming objects and relationships.

During the exhibition, there will be a series of public workshops re-imaging the Bethlem hospital grounds as cultural & natural ‘commons’. Artists will build on the local knowledge of hospital staff, residents and visitors to produce guides and toolkits to help us revisit our relationship to the world, ourselves and each other.

Explore the exhibition artists and events below.

Artists:

Lateisha Davine Lovelace-Hanson
Lateisha is a performer, writer, theatre-maker, somatic practitioner, educator, community-healer, curator and facilitator of Jamaican heritage who enjoys swimming in open water, tending to what grows and plant-based cooking/nurturing/futuring.

Lateisha inhabits embodied tools for connection, intimacy and transformation – creatively accessing tools and healing pathways we need to live, love, and thrive through and beyond trauma, marginalisation and oppression.

Their work flows across intersections of race, gender, queerness, class, earth-climate and (dis)placement/diaspora, rooted in prophetic wisdoms of Black, Indigenous and POC queer feminist ecologies. Working intergenerationally and interdimensionally through social-engagement over the last 15 years.

Philip Deed
I wasn’t diagnosed as autistic until 2015. I spent more than half a century either “masking” (pretending to be like everyone else) or in hiding. School and work bullies figured it out long before the doctors did. Maybe that’s why you see my work as “inward looking”. The outside world is hard work for me a lot of the time.

The true reason why I didn’t want my art to be in student exhibitions was that I didn’t want a lot of fuss. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. These days I am slightly thicker skinned and very keen for my art to be seen by a wider audience than just myself.

“I’m Nearly Healthy” is a line from Your Heart Out a song by my favourite group The Fall. Listening to this track on YouTube may seriously impair your enjoyment of the art. Don’t do it. Some of my artworks which the Bethlem Gallery has in storage are named after Fall songs. I often listen to their music (at very low volume to avoid enraging people in neighbouring rooms) whilst making the collages.

Just take for instance
A time of great depression
Fade out of reason
Bad time’s in season

Don’t shut your heart out
Don’t cry your eyes out

Don’t cry for me, Mexico
Or Savage Pencil
I’m nearly healthy

And they try to take my eyes out
Friends try to work my soul out
But I don’t sing, I just shout
Heavy clout, heart out

Karta Kaur
Karta works with clay, found materials, paint and photography in the “arts in health” and social engagement domain, recognizing the role creativity plays in building communities and increasing wellness in participants. She was an Artist in Residence with the Centre for the Study of Substructured Loss (Toronto), where she began the thematic exploration of clay handling, with emphasis on making as a way to document and move through common human experiences such as grief and loss. During the pandemic with Relational Space Gallery (New York) she co-created  “Long Covid We Are Here” a virtual reality installation to stimulate discussion and research on Long Covid. She is part of the Bethlem Gallery Artist Community (London) and delivers clay workshops under their umbrella.

Aidan Moesby
Aidan Moesby is an artist, curator and writer who explores civic and personal wellbeing through a body of work that is at once playful, intimate, questioning and deeply human. His practice is a socially engaged one, rooted in research and response – in conversation of many kinds. He works extensively within arts and health and has a particular interest in the spaces where art, technology and wellbeing intersect. Aidan regularly curates and participates in events and discussions which centre these ideas.

Underpinning his work investigating the dual crises of Climate Change and Mental Health is an exploration into the relationships between the outer ‘physical weather’ we experience, and our ‘internal psycho-emotional weather’. He brings a nuanced and insightful approach to the emotional context of working with climate change and the deep inter-connectedness between the natural and social environments within modern life. Equally likely to be found beyond formal arts institutions as within them, his practice includes both Disability Arts and mainstream representation as artist and curator.

Ronnie
My inspiration for my photography comes from finding pockets of beauty in what seems to be a very restrictive way of life. You the viewer will be able to see the stark contrast between the beautiful flowers and the very oppressive gloom of the structures which surround this place. It is just a little taste of the environment in which I live.