Rhys Coren
Love Is The Message (Dedicated to the NHS and the Staff at BHOC), 2019
Vinyl wallcovering, framed prints
Barts Health Orthopaedic Centre (BHOC), Newham University Hospital
For his first public art commission, Rhys Coren has brought whimsical humour to the new Barts Health Orthopaedic Centre (BHOC) at Newham University Hospital.
Known for his upbeat, animation-like work that explores colour and rhythm, Coren has relined much of the new Centre with a doodle-inspired wall covering. It plays with the idea of domestic wall paper and is intended to bring a sense of interior design, home-away-from-home, and familiarity to the clinical environment. The wall covering is overlaid with quirky framed prints running throughout the space. The immersive pattern creates a harmonious installation that connects different areas of the Centre. It greets patients arriving for elective orthopaedic surgery and accompanies them as they move from reception, to waiting areas, down corridors and into the discharge lounge. Coren’s design plays with the cliché of the picture frame — an object that is often used as a generic symbol for “art” — as his commission takes into account bulletin boards, television screens and signage that ordinarily exist in a clinical setting. Last year, the artist received a rave review in Time Out which called him “a brilliant young artist” whose work is “about the joys of perambulating” — and this uplifting commission is intended to assist patient recovery, and encourage more perambulation after mobility-restoring orthopaedic surgery at BHOC.
Rhys Coren was born in Plymouth in 1983. He graduated from the Royal Academy, and has exhibited internationally including in prestigious venues in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Stockholm, Berlin, Milan, Venice. Within the UK, his work has been shown widely, such as Bloomberg Contemporaries, Jerwood Foundation, Bluecoat Liverpool, and most recently at the National Museum of Football in Manchester. He is currently working on a major public art commission to be installed in Hannover Square, London.
