Art in Hospitals

Press, 7 October 1987, Page 15

Art in Hospitals

“Art In Hospitals,” an exhibition by invited artists at the CS.A. Gallery, until October 11. Reviewed by Pat Unger.

“The Art in Hospitals” exhibition is the first of its kind in Canterbury. Its purpose is to give donors — either business, corporate or private — the opportunity to buy original works of art and then gift them to the Canterbury Hospital Board. In this way they are able not only to show their (or the public’s) appreciation of the various hospitals under the board’s jurisdiction, but also to help the board develop an art collection of considerable worth.

The gifted works will be used to make “the general atmosphere of our hospitals a welcoming one,” help the “healing process" and generally improve the “environment of our sick people.”

Selection for this exhibition has been by an arts advisory committee made up of an artist and art administrator. They must be congratulated. The walls of the Mair Gallery and Print Room are alive with works of brightness and up to the minute contemporariness. Artists — mainly Canterbury and all well known — are represented by good, and in some cases even better than good, examples of their work. Martin Whitworth’s “Still Life” is strong and decorative; Grant Banbury’s blue “Untitled” has a dreamlike quality with

its textured tone-on-tone; and Graham Bennett’s “Untitled” mixed media on paper is a eulogy to the mark and the right angle. Simon Ogden’s “Cross, Crescent, Dash, Dot” gives out its colour message as competently as ever. Simon Mclntyre’s “Dry Docks I and n” please with their hints of realism within a semi-geometric abstraction and in “Study for Painting in Ambiguous Space” Don Peebles gives aesthetic form to the invisible. Rudi Boelee’s 2.5 m square work is so large and dynamically for and against the commercial world that it overpowers. It may, however, act as a cathartic in the ultimate hour as it encourages a “No Surrender” mentality. “Cable Markers,” by Dean Buchanan, similarly electrifies with its multi-facets and multi-hues. His landscape is art in prisms of fractured vision and is a

real energiser. Obviously these works have all the necessary stimulant and depressant qualities. They have investment potential. But the stated aim of this excellent endeavour is to make hospitals “as much like home as possible.” The homes of “our sick people” in all probability reflect a popular rather than an elitist choice in art, and if the healing process is related to being in a relaxing environment a wider selection of art styles could have been offered to advantage. For those 10 per cent of Canterbury people who will see the walls of our public hospital system in any given year (and their visitors), this reviewer suggests they should look forward to what will be an elevating experience. Otherwise they must just grin and bear it until they return to the comforts of home.