Biographies

Beth Hopkins – Curator
Beth Hopkins is a visual artist and researcher. She has worked with Bethlem Gallery since her solo exhibition, Traces, in 2017. She has completed research residencies, participated in group exhibitions, run a programme of monthly art workshops, and collaborated with a writer in residence to produce a book of art and poetry, Re-Collections (2018). Publications include Dogtown (2018), Everything Including the Kitchen Sink (2020), Making Investigations: Binding (2020), Making Investigations: Textiles (2021), and Future Selves (2022). Beth has exhibited with Bethlem Gallery at Manchester Contemporary (2021) and has completed research projects at Wellcome, who later acquired her work for their collection. Collaboration is core to Beth’s practice. Workshops include Freedom to Make at the Free Space Project in Camden and the Campaign Space for Outside In at Phoenix Art Space Brighton. Recent projects with Bethlem Gallery include Future Selves – a book, exhibition and film, made in collaboration with people with bipolar. It was developed in dialogue with research at King’s College London into advanced decision making.

Artists

Baba aka Professero Babalascar
Professero Babalascar, also known as Baba, is a multimedia artist, a Bethlem Gallery Founders Award Winner 2019 and showed work as part of The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition 2021.  

“Through making art, you express the unseen side of yourself, it’s like underneath your skin, the ghost inside your shell. You are your own creator and your own god. You have infinite amount of imagination.” – Professero Babalascar

Corinne (They/Them)
Corinne is a disabled self-portrait artist producing photographic depictions from the same 2 by 1.5 metre space; their bed. This year marks their fifth year of spending almost every day confined there. Their self-portraits are a form of therapy to ease their ongoing struggles with mental illness. Their work often focuses on ‘Daisyland’ a queer utopia, Corinne and their only childhood and imaginary friend named Daisy created.

“The biggest barrier to developing my career is my inability to be physically present; the rise of virtual working during the pandemic removed this barrier. From bed I undertook remote residences with The New Art Gallery Walsall, QUAD, Talking Birds and Level Centre. I’m a member of The New Art Gallery Walsall’s ‘Collections Community Panel’ who helped co-produce the exhibition ‘Here & Queer’. Currently I’m producing new work in response to the galleries ‘Garman Ryan’ collection exploring ‘Period poverty’.”

Corinne’s work is part funded by The Level Centre’s Residency Scheme.

Eddie
Eddie is a prolific artist who draws daily on anything at his disposal, often to give away to staff and patients at Bethlem Royal Hospital.

Eddie often draws heads on paper cups, these are medication water cups are always at his disposal. The drawings are people around him and those he thinks about whilst listening to music on his headphones. The faces often belong to the same individual who he attempts to capture differently each time he paints them.

Max Reeves
Max Reeves was born in Papakura, New Zealand/Aoteoroa in 1966 and moved to London in 1990. Based in the East End, Max is a self taught photographer interested in Counter-Culture, Sykogeosophy, Folk and Myth, Outsiders, Edgeworlds and Imagination. Max self-publishes books with Entropy Press and likes collecting, cheese, wandering and Arsenal FC. 

Sue Morgan
Sue Morgan completed a doctorate in German philosophy and worked in the city as a corporate tax lawyer before being forced to retire in 1998 because of a diagnosis of schizo-affective disorder. It was during time spent in hospitals that she began working visually and since that time has gained a first class degree at Camberwell in 2008, was a finalist in the DLA Piper Art Award 2009, and in 2010 had a solo show in Mayfair, represented by Sarah Myerscough Fine Art.

“Lacking the ability to withdraw consent to being born without the requisite instruction manual, Sue Morgan has attempted to exist on this planet & not elsewhere for many rotations of the earth around the hot thing. For this project fictional entities have been invented who are ridiculously tiny, immortal & whose default mental state is one of happiness. These animal stones grow in size in direct proportion to the happiness quotient on this planet. So they might be bigger elsewhere, but certainly not here, atm.” – Sue Morgan

Turf Artists
        
Daisy Young
Materials sit at the core of Daisy Young’s creative practice. She uses clay, fabric, weave and stitch in combination to create large abstract objects. She is interested in sustainability and what happens to her art objects after they have fulfilled their purpose. She uses materials that either have an endless life cycle, like clay which can be reclaimed or fabric which can be repurposed and reused.

Daisy’s inspiration often comes from nature. In developing her work for ‘Elsewhere’, Daisy will look for inspiration within the grounds to find new motifs, colour pallets and textures. She will explore these new discoveries by using fabric, weave and stitch to create a series of colourful kites to signify memories of childhood, open spaces and play.

Hoagy Houghton
Hoagy Houghton is a visual artist living in South Norwood. Whilst predominantly a printmaker, Hoagy’s work draws on a number of disciplines and mediums to fit a concept or idea. “The one constant in my work is humour, which I use as a tool for transforming difficult subject matter. Focusing on social issues such as mental health, living with loss and anxieties around our changing climate, I meld personal experiences with melancholy and humour to create my own visual language.”

Hoagy’s artwork for the exhibition will celebrate an overlooked member of our cities – the everyday plants that can grow amongst the toughest of urban environments –  through cracks in the pavement and from compacted soil, these are the plants that we like to call ‘weeds’. There is an interesting comparison to be drawn with how these plants and the people who live around them will find their own way to engage with and use public spaces. 

Pear Nuallak
Pear Nuallak’s interdisciplinary practice looks at the relationship between the body and the land, bringing forth shared memories so they are alive with and open to connection.

Handmade textile sculpture, drawing, collage, soundwork, and writing are tools they use to unearth these histories, often working with a mix of found objects, foraged pigments, and natural materials in response to specific sites.

Pear’s work to date is “an archive that opens under my hands, from the history of enclosure bred into the softness of wool to centuries-old drain covers that evidence Croydon’s formation through delivering health and public infrastructure.”

This exhibition is “an opportunity to connect with Bethlem through a playful, associative way of thinking and making. I am interested in responding to the site and using my various skills to create multi-sensory work (e.g. touchable surfaces, audio and written descriptions) that can truly engage everyone.”