Springfield Eternal (2022), Hospital Rooms public commission, Springfield Hospital, Tooting

This large-scale public project, commissioned by the leading nonprofit Hospital Rooms, which brings world-class Art, and Wonder, to Mental Health Patients. Hospital Rooms commissions leading artists to make work for British psychiatric hospitals. Founded six years ago by the couple Tim A. Shaw, an artist, and Niamh White, a curator, the organisation is turning British psychiatric wards into spaces that could rival some museums.

The enormous collage by artist Michelle Williams Gamaker takes up the walls of the entrance/atrium that depicts an ape overlaid with clusters of fruit, flowers and Greek statuary. The work features relief elements, and is aimed to give service users a space for imagination within the intricate collaged layers. “If art matters anywhere, it matters in these spaces,” says co-founder of Hospital Rooms, Niamh White.