This is a short film essay about an extraordinary collection of artworks created by patients of the Netherne psychiatric hospital between 1946 and 1981.
This is a short film essay about an extraordinary collection of artworks created by patients of the Netherne psychiatric hospital between 1946 and 1981. The collection of around 5,500 works was preserved by Edward Adamson, one of the pioneers of art therapy, who ran an art studio at the hospital. The collection remains one of the major bodies of British “asylum art.” Blending archive, reconstruction, interviews, and observational footage, the film explores the transformation of the objects in the collection, from clinical material to art objects, and examines the history of postwar asylum life in the UK.