Mind Where You Look - February 2006

Can where you view art change the way you view it? Look at a picture in a gallery and then look at it somewhere totally different… like a hospital, and you may have a very different reaction. Can art in hospitals act as a catalyst for positive experiences – for patients, visitors and staff? And can the viewer take their own meaning from art which is related to the viewing context?
In 2004/ 5, during a sabbatical from her role as Arts Co-ordinator of the Waterford Healing Arts Trust , Mary Grehan curated an exhibition of 15 artworks which she placed in an acute hospital and public gallery in Greater Manchester. This exhibition was the basis for a study which looked at people’s experience of viewing art in an acute hospital as opposed to a public gallery.
Mary Grehan explains her motives for the study “Responses to art in any context tell us as much about the viewer and the environment as they do about the artwork. As the arts and health field continues to grow, this project sets out to understand the hospital environment as a site for placing art. This will inform the development of an ethos for placing art in acute hospitals which is sensitive to the nature of that hospital while assisting the challenging process of curating the artwork.”
Mary presented this study in a lunchtime talk in the Education Centre of Waterford Regional Hospital in February 2006. This is the first in the Trust’s Spring series of monthly lunchtime talks which aims to offer a window on the diverse practices that come under the umbrella of ‘Arts and Health’.