Artists including Anish Kapoor help raise funds for patients in NHS mental health units

UK charity Hospital Rooms will sell limited-edition posters of artwork, with proceeds going towards digital art workshops for patients

Anish Kapoor's 'Breathing Blue' poster is priced at £50. Courtesy of Anish Kapoor and Hospital Rooms

In light of Mental Health Awareness Week, held from May 18 to 24, the UK charity Hospital Rooms has collaborated with artists to design limited-edition posters in order to raise funds for patients in mental health units of NHS hospitals, as reported in The Art Newspaper.

Artists Anish Kapoor, Richard Wentworth, Cornelia Parker, Giles Deacon, Emma Talbot and Unskilled Worker have each created posters that will be released weekly and sold on the Hospital Rooms website for £50 (Dh220) beginning Thursday, May 21.

The first poster is Kapoor's Breathing Blue, a meditative work made of radiating shades of blue.

The proceeds will help fund the charity’s Art School project, a series of digital art workshops by artists for patients in mental health units of NHS hospitals across the UK.

“This is a time where we are all gaining some understanding of how it feels to have our freedoms restricted and how important it is to create an environment that helps us sustain our mental health,” Hospital Rooms stated on their website.

The issue of mental health has become increasingly important during the pandemic, with inpatients being unable to accept visitors or take patient leave.

Founded in 2016 by artist Tim A Shaw and curator Niamh White, Hospital Rooms is aimed at improving the health and wellbeing of those using mental health services through art and design. Their projects involve working with artists to produce or share artworks that will be displayed inside mental health units.

In 2018, for example, Hospital Rooms installed 10 prints of Kapoor's Breathing Blue throughout the Snowsfields Adolescent Mental Health unit in South London.

The Art Newspaper reported that the charity's site-specific projects have been stalled because of the pandemic, and its staff has been currently been furloughed. Hospital Rooms is also working with artist Susie Hamilton for another fundraising project aimed at supporting the charity during this crisis. Hamilton has created limited-edition posters of two drawings of front-line NHS workers battling the coronavirus.