Bethlem Live Lounge

Welcome to Bethlem Live Lounge, our summer exhibition-slash-recording-slash-festival!

Curated by The Artist Taxi Driver, Bethlem Live Lounge is not a typical art show. There are no exhibits. Instead, we offer the community a frame, a screen, a platform, and invite you to make your own music with us.

With the gallery transformed into the ‘live lounge’, visitors will come into an extraordinary space filled with wall hangings, sofas, rugs, projections, keyboards, drums, digital musical equipment, a double bass and a DJ booth. You will be able to browse reimagined vintage rock t-shirts and a cassette tape library, and mix or make music thanks to an immersive recording studio and an array of musical instruments.

Workshops and performances will run during the course of the exhibition. We will be hosting Bethlem Live Lounge Festival on 8 June.

Melancholy and Madness, an album produced by Gawain Hewitt (winner of the Mastercard BRIT Awards Trailblazer award 2024), is an experimental soundscape by the Bethlem Gallery community, and will be released as a limited edition vinyl LP as part of the opening of Bethlem Live Lounge. Exploring themes of mental illness and hospitalisation, it features the voices of Bethlem artists, the Mind & Soul Community Choir, and internationally-renowned musician Nitin Sawhney. Preorder your copy now!

A proposed second album will be recorded during the exhibition through a programme of workshops, music lessons, spoken word and open mic events. Recording will happen often and our visitors will have the opportunity to feature on the album by engaging with the show.

This is the sound of our community.

Bethlem Live Lounge is curated by The Artist Taxi Driver, with the involvement and support of Bethlem artists including Finn, Barrington G., Halimah Zakiuddin, Kim, Susannah, Siobhan, Mr X, Mud, the Bethlem Writing Collective, Ross Barry, Pete Harris, Warren Drugs, Nitin Sawhney, Julie Verhoeven and Gawain Hewitt. Album cover artwork was created by Halimah Zakiuddin, Gemma Pengilley, Steve aka Negative Response, Ben McGarey, and Pete Harris.

It has been developed in collaboration with Professor Sally Marlow and is supported by The ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health at Kings College London.