Hospital Rooms
2018-2019 Hospital Rooms, UK
Dining Room, Croydon PICU,
Wall mural, 2019
For his workshop Harold encouraged service users to explore the architecture and spaces in the unit through the use of wax rubbings. The mapping of different surfaces and textures was meant to aid discussions about their experience of the ward and their immediate environment. They started in the activity room and then ventured further, finding more interesting surfaces to work with in the courtyard and communal hallways. Harold layered the rubbings made in the workshop to create a composition that was then projected and painted directly onto the wall of the Dining Room.
Harold’s artwork with Hospital Rooms was also used to make a new lenticular print especially for the Science Gallery’s exhibition ‘On Edge’. The work was installed in the main foyer of the Science Gallery. More can be read about the continuation of the project here.
Photos: Damian Griffiths
TV Room, Eileen Skellern 1, Maudsley Hospital
Photographic installation, 2018
Harold was interested in trying to find a visual language that would speak to the experiences of the staff and patients of ES1. Beauty seemed to be at the heart of this transformation of the room, moving away from the blank white walls and bringing colour, nature and life.
Inspired by how some of the other commissioned artists had looked to nature: plant and animal life to bring beauty and animate the ward, Harold set himself the challenge of trying to find the beauty in the everyday urban environment. Remembering the thin-film interference phenomena, where oil on a wet surface is refracted with light to reveal colours and patterns (an all too familiar sight on British roads), Harold worked with the patients of ES1 to re-created the effect. The photographic images presented in TV room are a selection of these striking and transformative images. They capture a fleeting quality and remind us of the possibility for the everyday and overlooked to be spectacular and beautiful.
Photos: Damian Griffiths
