‘Audrey Amiss: The Surviving Exhibitions’ is the first museum exhibition dedicated to artist Audrey Amiss (1933–2013). Bringing together drawings, paintings and other exhibition materials, it explores Amiss’s life as both an artist and campaigner, revealing how she used her work to speak out against harmful treatment within the mental health system.
Born in Sunderland, Amiss won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Arts in the 1950s, where she studied painting until a mental health crisis and subsequent psychiatric treatment prevented her from completing her final year.
She continued to make, exhibit and sell art throughout her life – alongside a long career in the Civil Service – but the full breadth of her work only came into view after her death. Her extensive archive was donated to Wellcome Collection in 2014.
‘The Surviving Exhibitions’ focuses on works that records suggest Amiss exhibited or intended to make public.