Aliyah Hussain
Silhouette, 2021
Paper Collages
Staff On-Call Rooms, John Harrison House
Royal London Hospital
In response to the pandemic, Vital Arts extended its work on patient wellbeing to include initiatives to support NHS Staff. One such project was the commissioning of new artworks for a suite of on-call rooms for medics working overnight at the Royal London Hospital. These rooms, located in John Harrison House, were recently renovated to provide temporary accommodation for frontline clinical staff in need of respite.
Vital Arts commissioned Salford-based Aliyah Hussain to create a series of new vibrant paper collages. Entitled ‘Silhouette’, they reflect the artist’s facility with organic forms and layering of imagery. Her filigree-like collages create a sense of depth and three-dimensionality akin to her ceramic sculptures and jewellery pieces. The suite of works is distributed throughout the fourteen on-call rooms and adjoining public area–enabling staff to discover different artwork as they rotate rooms with each additional stay.
John Harrison House is a 1960s building named after the leading founder of the London Infirmary (later the London Hospital and eventually the Royal London Hospital) which was established in 1740. The 10-storey tower block originally contained more than 220 bedsits for hospital staff, but later used as offices. The renovation of rooms in the upper floors is part of Barts Charity’s mission to support staff during the pandemic.
Hussain’s palette harmonises with the on-call room furnishings, resulting in coordinated design that provides an elegant sense of ‘home-away-from-home’ for hardworking clinical staff. Vital Arts and Hussain are delighted to have contributed to the long legacy of staff care and wellbeing through this project.
Aliyah Hussain is a multidisciplinary artist whose work crosses the intersection of contemporary art and craft. With a background in performance and a practice rooted in process and making, her work moves across sound, ceramics, and drawing, with methods of collage and layering underpinning each discipline. Recent presentations and collaborations include The Sleep of Plants, Holden Gallery, Manchester (2020), Small Pleasures, DINA, Sheffield (2020) and The kitchen table collective, Human Libraries, Bootle/Crosby (2020), Soft Bodies (Potential Wor(l)ds), Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (2020).
This project has been kindly funded by
