Thomas A Clark, Andreas Karl Schulze, Olwen Shone, 'Untitled (Waiting Areas),'

Ten artists, two curators, two firms of architects and one construction company, two NHS commissioning managers, one head of major projects, one arts and health co-ordinator supported by one project manager spent more than four years working on the public art going into two new state-of-the-art hospitals in Glasgow. These projects are focused on the patient experience, addressing the sometimes stressful environment of hospitals and in particular the experience of waiting. They build on the evidence of the positive health and well-being benefits of experiences of natural environments.

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Curating New Stobhill

The Grove project in the New Stobhill Hospital focused on the benefits that experiencing the natural environment can have on health and well-being.
Thomas A Clark, lead artist/curator, and Andy Law, architect, formulated the following statement to encompass the project,

“It was our assumption that art is installed in a hospital not for purely aesthetic reasons but to contribute to a whole (or healing) ambience. For this it is not enough that art works be situated at strategic places, taken up with themselves and drawing attention to themselves. Art must be an integral part of the building fabric, developed simultaneously with the architectural design”.

and went on to say,

“The ambition of the art, poetry and architecture at New Stobhill Hospital is to lighten the hospital experience, to convert endured time into reflective time, and to elicit a more supple and resourceful waiting”.

The main waiting areas, such as the one above, have Latin names of trees sandblasted onto the glass overlooking the courtyard. Thomas A Clark is a poet and the sequence of these Latin tree names, 24 or more across the waiting areas, is a form of poetic list, words that roll off the tongue. On the end wall is a film on a screen. Olwen Shone filmed scenes in woodlands where almost nothing happens except that the light changes slightly or the breeze moves the leaves a little. On other walls in these areas Andreas Karl Schulze has created small compositions of colour. These work to break up long white walls without making a big statement.

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Thomas A Clark, Donald Urquhart, 'Six Landscapes,'

The works installed in Stobhill are a single collaboration rather than stand alone projects. Thomas A Clark and Donald Urquhart’s work Six Landscapes exemplifies this. Each of the Six Landscapes is different, with Donald Urquhart responding to a short, two line, poem by Thomas A Clark. These are located in ‘specialist’ clinic waiting areas.

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Thomas A Clark, 'Untitled (Waiting Areas)' (2009)

On the first and second floors of the main arcade, Thomas A Clark has put two different one line poems to do with colour, and Andy Law, the lead architect for Reiach and Hall, provided the wall colour to complement these works. Thomas A Clark’s poetry often takes the form of short statements. His most famous work In Praise of Walking is made up of a series of two line statements about his thoughts and experiences on walking.

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Kenneth Dingwall, 'Untitled (Waiting Areas)', (2009)

Perhaps the quietest work in the project is Ken Dingwall’s untitled abstract compositions painted into the corners of the Day Surgery and Endoscopy waiting/changing areas. Ken Dingwall, like Andreas Karl Schulze, chose his colours very carefully to work with the other colours in the space (such as the green of the doors, or the red of the fire alarms). His compositions, in his own terms, provide a modest distraction, drawing the eye whilst not ‘saying’ anything in particular.

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Donald Urquhart, 'Alphabet,' (2009)

Donald Urquhart’s suite of eighteen drawings entitled Alphabet might at first be mistaken for black and white photos or etchings. These details taken from a range of trees connect the heart of Glasgow with the Gaelic traditions of Scotland. In the ancient Gaelic children learnt the letters of the alphabet through associations with trees, so B is associated with Beith which is Birch, and N with Nuin which we call Ash.

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Donald Urquhart, Thomas A Clark, Andreas Karl Schulze, 'A Place Apart (Sanctuary),' (2009)

Donald Urquhart was also responsible for leading work on the New Stobhill Sanctuary. He worked closely with the Andy Law, the architect, Thomas A Clark and Andreas Karl Schulze. Donald Urquhart had previously completed the prize-winning Sanctuary at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

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Alec Finlay, moon-gate, Springburn Park, 2008

In parallel with this project, Alec Finlay worked with users of Springburn Park and the City’s Parks Department to develop a project which resulted in the opening up of what had been an overlooked corner of the Park. Alec Finlay’s Moon Gate now invites patients, visitors and staff to enter the park, and once in they find poems inscribed in rocks and painted on birdboxes.

Some of the works are in public areas of the hospital, but others including some of Ken Dingwall’s and Donald Urquhart’s are in areas not open to the public. Should you want to see these areas you should contact the Arts & Health Co-ordinator for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

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Curating New Victoria

The New Victoria project was curated by Juliet Dean of PACE. PACE set out a strategy appointing Ally Wallace and worked closely with HLM Architects to develop an approach which brought together the New Victoria Hospital with Queens Park through a number of artists’ approaches. Ally Wallace’s close collaboration with HLM Architects introduced coloured glazing into key public areas of the Hospital. Ally Wallace described working with HLM to understand the building, its orientation and the function of different areas, then taking watercolour paints and marking colour onto plans and elevations in a very improvised way. This simple strategy adds to the building in bright sunshine, and is also effective on dreich days.

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Ally Wallace, 'Navigators,' (2009)

Ally Wallace’s Navigators in the subterranean Car Park also use strong colour to differentiate spaces and provide landmarks for users.

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Hanneline Visnes, 'Trees and their reflections' (2009)

Within the Hospital waiting areas Hanneline Visnes created a number of murals on a common theme of Trees and their reflections. The idea of this work comes from looking at trees and their reflections in water. The trees become a new shape, different and not immediately recognised. The branches of trees in the morning and evening light of winter inspired the choice of the purple and deep red colours.

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Jacki Parry, 'Natural History' (2009)

Responding to the link between the Hospital and Queens Park, Jacki Parry created a series of sculptures from hand-made and coloured paper that come from researching microscopic parts of plants. These are installed within resin pods on the walls of two waiting areas.

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Ronnie Heeps, 'Squaring the Circle' (2009)

Ronnie Heeps developed the scheme for the Sanctuary at the New Victoria based on the idea of “squaring of the circle.” In geometry, you cannot create a square that has the same area as a circle using only a compass and a ruler. Because the area of the circle is based on pi, this task is impossible. It is only possible to draw the square approximately equal to the circle.

This mathematical impossibility was used in the construction of sacred buildings. For example, a column would be square at the bottom then turn into a circle at the top, as a metaphor for the impossibility of reconciling earthly existence with spiritual existence.
These ideas have informed the design of the Sanctuary in the New Victoria Hospital, a physical space which relates to the spiritual needs of the patients, visitors and staff.

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Calum Stirling, 'Sculpture Park' (2009)

Outside, Calum Stirling’s Sculpture Park brings Scotland’s geological past into the urban landscape of the Southside. The erratic boulders are juxtaposed with man-made elements: walls with Arabic patterns, white slabs for benches and the outline of a space in two steel rings.

The Scottish Arts Council supported both projects. Through the work of the Spiritual Care Committee both Sanctuary projects received substantial support from Glasgow’s faith communities. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s Staff Lottery also supported the Sanctuary projects, and the endowments matched the Scottish Arts Council awards.

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