Art, science and construction came together as an eclectic mix of artists, researchers, senior academics, students, construction specialists and members of the community arrived at the Crafts Council to celebrate the opening of Everything is Connected. The exhibition showcases the wonderful and wide-ranging art programme that runs alongside UCL’s major capital project to build a new neuroscience centre on Grays Inn Road.
Sam Wilkinson, Director of Public Art at UCL, began the evening, speaking to a packed gallery, welcoming guests and introducing the public art programme, which was conceived to generate opportunities for collaboration with patients and carers and to reach as many of the academic and research community at Queen Square Institute of Neurology as possible.
Professor Mike Hanna, Director of Queen Square Institute of Neurology spoke next. Having shaped and developed the Institute’s project to a build a world-class translational neuroscience centre since its inception more than a decade ago, Mike has been a huge supporter of the art programme and worked closely with the public art team to ensure that the building would have inspirational artworks that matched the centre’s ground-breaking research and vision as part of the plan.
It was a fitting location to introduce the evening, standing in front of lead artist Annie Cattrell’s work-in-progress, ‘Everything is Connected’ – which the exhibition is named after. Alongside a sample of gilded moonscape, which will eventually form the large-scale sculptural artwork positioned on the corner of the new building and the dramatic entrance arch piece Mirror, sits her poignant text artwork ‘Wise Words’, which will appear on the walls of the new centre. This piece read: ‘You don’t know what is around the corner, or even if there is a corner’.
Neuroscientist Dr Tatiana Giovannucci and artist and therapist Lucy Steggals, who had worked together on the artist/researcher knowledge-exchange programme Arbor, were up next to talk about their project Ebb & Flow.
Tatiana revealed that the seeds of the project were sewn at an Arbor ‘matchmaking’ event, where she, artist Lucy and PhD student Mar Estrarellas first talked about the idea of uncertainty – in research, and with people suffering from conditions like dementia. The group had gone on to create a card deck, with words, phrases and images on to help people have conversations and deal with their shifting emotions.
Guests were given one of the cards when they came into the gallery space and, after rolling a giant triangular soft dice, it was the visitors’ turn as everyone was asked to create their own stories with the person standing next to them.
It was a unique way to start a private view, with guests already in the spirit of the collaboration and discovery with which the artworks were made
With lively conversations in full-flow, guests continued to enjoy the exhibition.
In 'I Hear You', created by artist Alison Carlier and neuropsychologist Dr Jennifer Foley, people could sit in a calm, quiet space away from the main gallery, and listen to participants talk about their experience of early-onset Parkinson’s set to an instrumental soundtrack, created by a person also living with the condition.
In another exhibit, Red Lines, people could peer into differently sized petri dishes, created by artist Briony Campbell, neurologist Natalie Ryan and members of the Familial Alzheimer’s disease (FAD) support group. The ‘red’ symbolised the bloodlines that carry the FAD gene, the ‘red tape’ of the paperwork patients and carers must navigate to access support and the ‘red carpet’ of their contribution to research.
Visitors could see artist-in-residence Freya Gabie’s beautiful blue lightboxes, inspired by Dr. John Bevis’s 1739 star atlas and will be on display throughout the new centre at Grays Inn Road. Twelve stained-glass drawings will be illuminated by the light of a single day from twelve different locations worldwide.
The exhibition will now run until 3 June and there will be a range of events until it closes, including artist talks, bespoke tours for early career researchers and staff groups, as well as welcoming groups of people with lived experiences of neurological conditions.