Founders Award Exhibition 2021
Long Gallery, Maudsley Hospital
1st April – 26th September 2021
Open 8am – 7pm
Every year Bethlem Gallery runs an art fair for artists connected to South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust services. We invite a special guest to select the work of three artists who have recently joined the gallery.
The artists exhibiting in this showcase, Carlos Cortes, Daphne, Nathan Selvendran, Yasmine Martinez and Sophia Lazaridis, were selected by Wellcome Collection Librarian, Melanie Grant in 2019 and Bethlem Gallery Trustee and Wellcome Collection Curator, Shamita Sharmacharja in 2020. The works are on display in Maudsley Hospital’s Long Gallery. Due to ongoing covid restrictions, the gallery is only accessible to service users and staff at the Maudsley Hospital site. Please scroll down for more information about the artists and their works.
Carlos Cortes
Cortes and his partner had Covid 19 in early 2020. He describes it as a dark and dramatic time. Unable to work as he usually does by painting on found objects, he worked on an ipad, and he found a strange synergy with the increasingly digital lives we have all been living. The paintings in this show are the first digital body of work he has ever produced. As Cortes explains, ‘each character is a kind of “allegory” of some of the feelings you experience with this illness’.
Daphne
Daphne paints and draws from life and photographs. Speaking about her work she picks out the lion, appreciating its simultaneous grace and danger. She sketches and paints as often as she can. ‘Enjoying the painting you forget the outside world’.
Nathan Selvendran
Throughout the pandemic, Selvendran has been working on making hero characters that give extraordinary powers to NHS staff and reflect their work during this period.
Selvendran’s work explores anxiety, fear and isolation and draws on his own condition and struggles with autism. Using ink, coloured pencil, paint and collage, Selvendran references graphic novels in his depiction of superhero staff. He describes using his imagination to capture the feeling of being trapped and unable to communicate in a locked down world, whilst acknowledging the incredible work and power of the NHS.
Sophia Lazaridis
Lazaridis’s photographic practice began when she stopped using social media and started to go for walks. Throughout the recent lockdowns she spent more time in green spaces, taking photographs as she walked. With a body of work consisting of thousands of photographs, choosing works for this exhibition was not easy.
Lazaridis’s selected works focus in on nature from all four seasons and she has prioritised form, colour and light. Lazaridis aims to draw your attention to the beauty in details that you may not otherwise notice.
Yasmine Martinez
‘I analyse how I feel and I put that down’. Martinez uses visual art to communicate what she wants to say verbally. She uses words in her work, as well as figurative drawing from life, photographs and memory.
Please contact Bethlem Gallery if you would like to purchase any of the artwork from the exhibition: info@bethlemgallery.com.
