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Wednesday 29 January 2025, 5–6.30pm
Bethlem Gallery
Join Project Art Works at Bethlem Gallery for a discussion on environments and co-creation in creative practice.
New Build
Connections. Making. Environment
Bethlem Gallery
28 January – 7 February 2025
Open 9.30am – 5pm, Wednesday-Saturday
New Build is a Project Art Works residency across the Bethlem Gallery and the National Autism Unit (NAU).
The exhibition is a live studio which invites participants and visitors to interact with the space and experience an environment informed by the strengths, interests and priorities of those who have engaged with it before them.
Supported sessions in the live studio will enable a range of people to represent themselves on their own terms through authentic responses which become part of an evolving installation. New Build is a collaboration between Project Art Works and Bethlem Gallery, and forms part of a wider creative research and engagement programme which explores accessibility, creativity and inclusion within neurodiverse spaces, and informs the Arts Strategy for the new NAU Building at Bethlem Hospital. Through documenting, reflecting on and learning from the ideas of those who engage with the studio, New Build will be used to explore how site-responsive art can play a key role in contributing to building accessible and inclusive neurodiverse spaces and enhancing and ‘humanising’ the clinical environment.
Work in Bethlem Gallery runs in parallel with a closed art-making residency at the NAU. Here, patients and staff share space with the Project Art Works team, communicating through the language of materials – viscosity, colour, texture. Marks made as part of these visual conversations are displayed within the Bethlem Gallery exhibition.
This collaboration with Project Art Works is part of a month-long series of open studios at Bethlem Gallery which includes artists Mr X (22-25 January 2025) and Jules Cunningham (12-14 February 2025).
Image: Project Art Works residency, Challenging Behaviour Foundation, 2024
About Project Art Works
Project Art Works collaborates with people with complex support needs, families and circles of support. Their practice intersects art and care, responding to neurodivergence, its gifts and impacts. Challenging paradigms of inclusion, it spans direct practical and holistic support, film, events, projects and exhibitions.
Their studios provide the conditions for a broad range of autonomous and collaborative practices with neurodivergent artists, who take part on their own terms. Alongside the studios, the Support Collective brings together people who care for people with complex support needs where we share our experience and protect our rights through training, resources and advocacy.
Human connection and what it reveals about identity and how we view each other are explored within their work. Their practice continues to respond to the functional and ethical structures of diligence and care, respecting self-determination and privacy whilst working towards greater visibility and understanding of neurodiversity in culture.
Project Art Works were joint winners of the Film London Jarman Award 2020, shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2021, and were one of 15 international collectives that presented DOCUMENTA 15, 2022. Their recent major exhibition Residential is currently showing at the Copenhagen Contemporary. Project Art Works is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation.
www.projectartworks.org | @projectartworks
Filming & Photography
Please note that photographs and footage will be taken throughout New Build. These will be used by Bethlem Gallery to create documentation and communication materials for our publications, website, social media or in any third party publication.
If you would not like to be filmed or photographed, please speak to a member of staff.