Studio International
“Just like any thoughtful curatorial practice, Vital Arts undertakes extensive research and looks across the landscape of contemporary art to identify the artists we approach. We engage with current creative practice, constantly seeking artists unfamiliar to us. We focus on artists based in the UK, or who have a connection to and appreciation of the NHS. Given our hospitals are in east London, we have “local artists” aplenty. But, crucially, we intentionally work with artists who have not previously made work for hospitals, and often have never been commissioned. This undermines the predictability of so much public or “hospital art” – too easily rendered as the cut-and-paste of existing work. Such risk-taking requires vision, imagination and, above all, trust from our clinical colleagues whose day job doesn’t normally involve creative production.”
