Artwork
King’s Artists Award
In early 2019, through the Bethlem Gallery, Gemma met artist and set-designer Izzy Parker. Our lab started an art-science collaboration with Izzy, funded through a King’s Artists Award from King’s College London to enable an artist-in-residence collaboration. From end of 2019 until mid 2022, we collaborated on the project “Making emotions to reimagine mental health”. We ran workshops to explore emotions through making, with MSc students, online and in-person with mental health service users, and with year 12 students from 3 different schools across London (MRC CNDD). Our King’s Artists collaboration culminated with a public exhibition for World’s Mental Health Day in October 2021 at the Ortus Centre, with support from the Maudsley Charity. Over summer 2022, our lab and Izzy collaborated again on a series of workshops in mental health wards of Lambeth Hospital, with moving photography from these workshops created by Marlan Henry (@create_often). Above you can see a selection of images from our collaborations.
Pandemic times
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic we had to move to fully remote work for quite a few months. We started ‘virtual coffee meetings’ on Friday mornings, where we discussed science, life, TV, pets, and shared our experiences during the lockdowns. To facilitate informal conversation, we also made drawings, each week on a different theme. This led to a large archive of artworks by each lab member, produced between March 2020 and September 2022. Here’s a selection of contributions, from the following lab members: Leyla Abbasova, Zerrin Atakan, Larisa Dinu, Leda Kennedy, Amanda Kiemes, Sam Knight, Tzy-Chyun (Eva) Lin, Nick Livingston, Paulina Lukow, and Gemma Modinos.