Reflections on The Peter Sowerby Collection
The Peter Sowerby Collection is a new collection of artworks by artists with lived experience of mental health services being developed by Bethlem Gallery.
Chantal Condron, member of the Collection Advisory Board, shares her thoughts of the first six months of the project:
Listening to birdsong on a July afternoon, standing among gnarly apple trees that once formed part of the original Monks Orchard Estate and discovering a rather magical and well-hidden spring in the depths of the woodlands – this was not something I anticipated I would do in my role as an Advisory Board member of the Peter Sowerby Art Collection at the Bethlem Gallery. On a rare day when the sun came out this summer, I and the seven other members of the Board enjoyed a brilliant nature walk led by artist Matthew of the beautiful meadows surrounding The Bethlem Royal Hospital in Beckenham. One of the Gallery’s nature walks, this was a welcome reminder of the powerful role that the sights, scents and sounds of the Hospital’s natural environment play in the rehabilitation and healing of those experiencing challenges with their mental health.
Matthew’s nature walk was one of several activities that have illuminated the experience of being part of the Collection’s inaugural Advisory Board since our first meeting at the end of 2023. The Board was formed to advise and support the formation of The Peter Sowerby Art Collection, due to launch at the end of this year, which will eventually comprise approximately 200 works of art by artists who have had, or continue to have, connections to the Bethlem in recent years.
At each meeting, my fellow Board members, Daniel Regan, Shaz Hussain, Keith Clapson, Khaldoon Ahmed and Sonia Solicari and I – steered brilliantly by Collection Curator, Amisha Karia and Director, Sophie Leighton – have benefitted from the insight of others with direct experience of the Bethlem Hospital either as artist, consultant, team member or former recipient of mental health services. David Luck, Archivist of the Museum of the Mind, led us through the revealing and chequered history of the Bethlem Hospital (‘Bedlam’) from its origins in the City of London in the 13th century, later to Southwark, until its eventual relocation to the Beckenham site in 1930. Visiting the Long Gallery at the Ortus Centre in Denmark Hill, we enjoyed ‘Wednesday’, an exhibition of work by The Drawing Group, a regular drop-in drawing and writing group of artists who have met every Wednesday in the Bethlem’s studio space for nearly two years, forming a vibrant collective that is creative and supportive in equal measure. And we were hugely privileged to have visited some of the Hospital’s active care spaces including the Mother and Baby Unit and the Anxiety Disorders Residential Unit – two of the many spaces across the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) and the wider local community, that will benefit from the display of artworks from the new Collection.
Over the past six months, as the Advisory Board has reached the midway point of its activity, it’s a good moment to reflect on our experiences. Hand in hand with discussing and agreeing the clear and ethical guidelines for integral aspects of the Collection’s development policy including acquisitions and disposals, documentation, care and conservation, display and loans, a majority of our time has been spent exploring potential acquisitions from the Bethlem Gallery’s existing and eclectic artistic community. Paintings, drawings, sculptures, assemblages, prints, photographs, ceramics, textiles and installations – it has been revelatory and truly exciting to discover artworks across diverse media which express either through process, material, subject or intention, a broad range of makers’ individual experiences. At each meeting we have viewed and discussed our nominated choices of artworks and collectively made decisions over how we envisage them being part of the Collection. Paramount to our decisions, alongside the artistic strengths and joys of the works themselves, and pragmatic issues such as the scale and condition of artworks, it is the ethical considerations and high degree of care under discussion that have struck and moved me. How to trace artists with whom the Hospital or Gallery has lost contact? How to ensure that a deceased artist’s work is rightfully considered and accessioned if there are no existing contacts with their families or estates? How to ensure an artist’s or their family’s wishes are respected? How to ensure that purchase fees don’t detrimentally affect an artist’s individual financial situation, for instance in their receipt of state benefits? How to consider the potential positive and negative reverberation that an artwork’s sensitive content may have on someone else in a therapeutic space – or is it in fact our responsibility or not to make a judgement call on something as subjective as this? Every decision, every question is transfused by a sense of collective care across the Board – for artworks, for patients, for staff – and even for Board members ourselves. This is perfectly articulated by the email message that we received after our first meeting in 2023 from Collection Curator, Amisha: ‘Hi… I just wanted to check in after last Monday’s session – I hope you’re doing okay. I also wanted to let you know that if at any point during this process you need support, please do let me know as we can arrange for you to have access to a psychologist who works with the team and our artists.’
As we continue in the remaining months of our responsibilities on the Advisory Board, I’m feeling a great wave of anticipation and excitement to see the Collection take shape and begin its long term future journey(s) across the sites and spaces of SLaM. An art collection is often perceived as a collection of objects, intrinsically judged by its artistic merits, materials and values. Artworks can of course be all of these things. However, I hope that the works in The Peter Sowerby Art Collection, will, in addition, bring intangible emotional and sensory resonances and above all, a deep sense of care to the environment of treatment, therapeutic and clinical spaces. These artworks are powerful ambassadors of care and of shared, sometimes difficult individual experiences – their ‘value’ lies in the potential they embody to stimulate, comfort, intrigue, or support patients, staff and visitors who encounter them whether fleetingly or over a longer period of time.
Chantal Condron
July 2024