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Dish of Fruit © Audrey Amiss

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Audrey Amiss Rudy Loewe_access introduction

We have Audrey Amiss's exhibition named ‘The Surviving Exhibitions’.

Also we have Rudy Loewe exhibition named ‘Intimacies of Care – Spaces of Grief and Possibility’. 

These exhibitions are separate, but they explore a related theme which is mental health.

You are welcome to visit both exhibitions, or choose to explore just one.

Both exhibitions include BSL videos on screens. You can also scan the QR codes using your phone camera to access the digital guide. You will have the option to listen to an audio description or read the exhibition text.

There is a tactile floor line to help with wayfinding. At each digital guide stop, you will find a square with raised dots on the floor.

You can use our WiFi for free. Turn on your device’s WiFi and select Wellcome Guest. The first time you connect, you will be asked to enter your email address.

This pick-up station provides BSL information. If you would like information about a specific exhibition, you can find gallery guides and large-print guides here. These guides include a map of the tactile floor line, as well as a list of all the digital-guide stops.

You will also find visual stories, which provide pre-visit information about the exhibition using images, symbols and short written explanations.

If you have any questions or need support, please approach a member of staff wearing a Wellcome Collection T-shirt – they will be happy to help.

Hello and welcome to the digital guide for ‘Audrey Amiss: The Surviving Exhibitions’ and ‘Rudy Loewe: Intimacies of Care – Spaces of Grief and Possibility’. These are separate exhibitions and you can visit them both, in any order, or chose to visit just one.

This stop provides information about access resources.

The other stops provide further information about some of the key works in the exhibition, and you will hear from the curator, artists and other contributors. This is combined with visual descriptions of the artworks. There are nine stops for each exhibition, including an introduction.

You have accessed the guide by scanning a QR code. You can also access the audio information by picking up one of the handheld players and a headset from the pick-up station in the foyer.

A tactile floor line is designed to support wayfinding between the stops. When you arrive at an artwork which has a stop, this is indicated on the floor by a square with raised dots.

You will find a QR code and stop number in close proximity to the square. The QR codes can be found on circular discs, with a number in high-contrast lettering. In the Rudy Loewe exhibition these are brown, and for the Audrey Amiss exhibition they are white with a green border. They are located either on the wall, on a label rail, or on a freestanding label holder next to the artwork.

If you need any assistance, there are members of our team in the gallery at all times. They will be wearing a black Wellcome Collection top.

In the foyer, there is a pale brown wooden pick-up station. In this pick-up station you will find a screen with a BSL introduction; on the right are the audio handsets and headphones.

On the right of the doorway to Rudy Loewe and to the left of the doorway to Audrey Amiss are shelves with various access guides. A4-sized large-print guides include exhibition texts in large font size, a map of the floor line, as well as a list of the digital-guide stops. There is one for each exhibition; they have the exhibition title and a symbol of an eye with a line through the middle on the cover.

You will also find A4-sized visual story booklets. These provide pre-visit information about the exhibition, using images, symbols and short written explanations. They have a symbol of a book on the cover.

There are also A4-sized maps of sensory elements in each exhibition, such as bright lights or sound. These have symbols of a nose, hand and ear on the cover.

There is seating available in both exhibitions. There are also folding seats available at the pick-up point in the foyer.

The tactile floor line for both exhibitions finishes near the exit. This is marked by a raised tactile tile with lines, rather than dots.

The first stop for each of the exhibitions is an introduction, where you will hear from curator Madeleine Kennedy. With the pick-up station in front of you, you can turn left to access the Rudy Loewe exhibition and right for Audrey Amiss.

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Audrey Amiss_track 01_orchestra

In 1958, at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the artworks were shown in different sections, including the ‘multiples’ section.

Audrey Amiss had two works exhibited in this section, where multiple copies were sold.

One piece, called ‘Interior’, is not on display here.

The other is the orchestra painting, which you can see here. It shows a view of the orchestra, with musicians such as violin players and flautists.

Introduction to the exhibition and ‘Orchestra’

You are now in the introduction area of ‘Audrey Amiss: The Surviving Exhibitions’.

Audrey Amiss was a prolific artist, working across painting, watercolour, drawing, pastel and photography, and filling an estimated 50,000 sketchbook pages.

She trained as a painter at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in the 1950s, and whilst she experimented with various styles over her career, she always worked ‘from life’, writing in 1998 that she “stuck to their methods of training, for there is endless inspiration in realism or painting the world around you”.

Ahead of you is the introduction text and to the right an artwork called ‘Orchestra’, one of two works by Audrey Amiss that were exhibited in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1958, a prestigious annual open-submission show selected by a panel of judges.

‘Orchestra’ is a framed print in landscape format. The printed image itself is 9 centimetres high by 13 centimetres wide, and it’s surrounded by a large mount in a frame that’s 38cm high by 46 cm wide. The print shows a view from among an orchestra of about 25 musicians, dressed in black tuxedos. Their heads are depicted as plum-coloured oval shapes, most of them topped with black hair. They sit at music stands, arranged in a semicircle facing a conductor. He stands on a raised platform, but the lower part of his body is hidden by the music stands. The space behind him is depicted as a swathe of black flecked with blue. The floor is a sandy colour, as are the chairs on which the players are sitting. Some of the chairs are only implied by the sitting position of the players’ bodies. Most of the chairs and music stands in the lower left corner are unoccupied, and towards the right, violinists cluster – their bows bristling, pointing into the air. The conductor looks towards the players, his baton in one hand pointing down. His other hand is outstretched as if he’s quietening the players. It’s a small but powerful image, evoking the hushed moment of rapt attention before the music begins.

To the left of this print is the exhibition’s introduction text. It explains that alongside her artistic work, Amiss campaigned for reform to the mental health system, attending demonstrations and writing to policymakers. Identifying as a mental health survivor, she drew on her own experiences, having left the Royal Academy after what she described as her first mental breakdown. She was detained in psychiatric units at least 11 times between the 1950s and 2000s.

After her death in 2013, Amiss’s archive was donated to Wellcome Collection by her family. In developing this exhibition, our aim was to understand what Amiss herself wanted to be seen publicly, and the perspectives on the mental health system that she wanted to be heard.

This required careful archival research to understand her wishes, balanced with a need to respect her privacy.

Much of Amiss’s campaigning challenged the lack of agency she and other mental health survivors faced in psychiatric systems, which makes questions of consent and self-representation especially key when presenting her work.

Decisions about what to consult and exhibit were made case by case, working with people who knew Amiss, those connected to survivor movements, and a team of lived-experience advisors, including people with experience of psychiatric detention.

This archival research revealed that dozens of Amiss’s artworks were included in group exhibitions, and she organised at least six solo shows, some of which drew attention to survivors’ experiences in psychiatric systems. These exhibitions became our guide for what to include in ‘The Surviving Exhibitions’, which attempts to reassemble as many of these as possible, amplifying the message of a talented artist dedicated to advocating for justice.

The walls in this space are painted in a rich green-blue colour, similar to the kind of paint colours used in the Royal Academy of Arts in the 1950s, where Amiss first exhibited this work.

From here on, the exhibition unfolds as a series of interconnected rooms, each designed to reflect the space in which the works that are on display here were originally shown in by Amiss herself.

Please be aware, this exhibition includes terms historically used in relation to mental health, some of which are outdated or offensive.

You can find a glossary in the Gallery Guide for further information. 

This is the end of track one. Please follow the tactile path to your right to find the next stop on the digital guide.

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Audrey Amiss_track 02_open exhibitions

In the 1980s, Audrey Amiss’s art has evolved.

First of the paintings, you can recognise a vase with flowers.

Second of the paintings, you will notice that there is a little change; you can vaguely see trees.

Third painting, you will probably not distinguish what it is, as her style has changed.

These were submitted to the Royal Institute of Oil Painters’ exhibition.

The 1981 artwork was submitted and rejected. The 1983 artwork was then submitted and accepted and selected for the exhibition. The 1987 artwork was later submitted and rejected.

You are now in the first section of the exhibition, called Open Exhibitions, which brings together 10 of the over 200 paintings, drawings and pastels in the collection that have a label on the back of the frame indicating that Amiss submitted them to open-submission exhibitions.

It seems that after her early success exhibiting works at the Royal Academy, Amiss primarily submitted her work to other artist-led societies’ exhibitions, many of which were hosted at the Mall Galleries in London.

Before we began developing this exhibition, there was a perception that Amiss had not been able to exhibit many of her works this way. For example, she wrote to her sister in the early 2000s about lots of her artworks having been rejected by the Mall Galleries.

Whilst this is true, according to their archive she had much more success with them earlier in her career, and at least 54 of her works were displayed in their open exhibitions between the 1960s and 1990s. Most are not in the archive of Amiss’s work donated to the Wellcome Collection, suggesting that they may have been sold when first exhibited, like the works she exhibited at the Royal Academy.

There were about ten artists’ societies that Amiss regularly submitted work to. In front of you are a group of three paintings Amiss submitted to the Royal Institute of Oil Painters over the course of the 1980s. Displayed together, they show the development in her painting style over that decade, from a layered and impressionistic still-life to a more quickly rendered scene.

The first on the right is taller than it is wide and measures 42 x 33 cm.  It has a simple, narrow wooden frame, painted gold and chipped in places.

This painting is called ‘Vase of Flowers’, submitted for exhibition in 1981. It is painted with bold brushwork. The tulip-style blooms are red, and the green stems are highlighted with yellow. The glass vase appears to stand on a window ledge of dark brown wood, which contains splashes of red. Thick black lines define the vase, swooping either side of it. This painting is full of movement. Immediately beyond the window, it looks as if a narrow stream is flowing in front of a vibrant green riverbank, matching the green and yellow of the stems in the vase.  This could represent the idea of drawing the outside in.

To the left of ‘Vase of Flowers’ is another painting called ‘Avenue of Autumn Plane-trees, Clapham Common’, which Amiss submitted for an exhibition two years later. It is landscape in format measures 28 cm wide x 23 cm tall. It shows six brown trunks in a semicircle around a dark yellow patch of ground. The lines of the brushwork suggest tree bark. The tree’s trunks are topped with olive-green canopies and set against a horizontal sweep of blue paint suggesting sky. The foreground is blotched with grey scatter marks, as if it is raining.

Most of the artworks that Amiss exhibited in Mall Galleries exhibitions were not in her home when she died, meaning they are not in the archive of her work at the Wellcome Collection. This painting is an exception, as it was exhibited in 1983.

The third painting, on the far left, is ‘Christmas Lights, Oxford Street’, submitted to the same artists’ society in 1987. It measures 29 cm wide x 34 cm tall. It is an explosion of green and yellow paint above swirls of deep midnight blue. In both of these last two paintings, the artist’s initials, A J A, are clearly placed in the lower left-hand corner.

What is striking about all three images is the energy and confidence with which they are painted, the latter two appearing to have been captured in a few quick bursts of paint, with the speed of a sketch.

This is the end of track two. The tactile path now leads behind you to the next stop.

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Audrey Amiss_track 03_poster for fireworks

For Audrey Amiss’s exhibitions, she promoted them by designing her own posters.

Some of these were made using pages from her sketchbooks, with drawings and writing that she pulled out and turned into posters.

This poster here is different, as it is a photocopy. You can see an image of a woman, naked, bent over and turned away.

Underneath, there is black handwritten text. These lines provide information about the exhibition, such as the location, contact details, the artworks included, and the dates.

You are now in the second section of ‘Audrey Amiss: The Surviving Exhibitions’, which is called ‘Self-Organised Exhibitions’.

In front of you is a large display case inset into the wall, with posters, price lists and other exhibition materials from the archive of Amiss’s work donated to Wellcome Collection. It was through items like these that we learned Amiss organised at least six solo exhibitions of her artwork between the 1980s and 2000s.

For some of these exhibitions Amiss kept price lists with the names of all the works she exhibited, enabling us to cross-reference these with descriptions of her artworks in Wellcome Collection, to try and reassemble as many of her exhibitions as possible.

In front of you is a photocopied poster for ‘Fireworks: A Protest Exhibition’, which Amiss made in 1989.

It is A4 in size and has two holes punched in its left-hand side. This poster was stored with a letter Amiss sent to her sister about this exhibition. At its midpoint, the page has crease marks where it has been folded over to fit in the envelope.

Above the crease, the top half of the page features the outline of a nude woman sketched with a few black lines. She has her back to us and is turned slightly to the right, so we see more of her right side than her left. She seems to be crouching, or possibly kneeling, with her upper body bending forward. Her right leg is bent at the knee, so her calf is folded under her, and her right hand cups her knee. Her head is raised and her long hair flows forwards over her shoulders, cascading towards the floor. Her face is not visible, as she’s turned away from us. There is a tactile reproduction on the angled label in front of you where you can trace the outline of the drawing.

The image takes up most of the poster, but in the lower third of the page are seven lines of bold handwritten text, carefully painted with delicate brushstrokes in black watercolour. These give the information about the exhibition. The name of the venue, “The Wren, St. James’s Church”, is in capital letters, and the rest in lower case, capitalised as appropriate: “Piccadilly. Tel: 01-734 4511. Exhibition of Photographs of Vietnamese Boatpeople in Hong Kong Harbour. Drawings, watercolours etc. by Audrey Amiss 13 February – 5 March 1989.”

Most of the artworks that Amiss displayed in her solo exhibitions have been difficult to trace. However, ‘Fireworks: A Protest Exhibition’ is one we have been able to partly reassemble, and about half of works she showed in it can be found later in this exhibition.

We think Amiss may have produced more exhibitions than those we currently know the details of. For example, in 1989 she refers to presenting exhibitions inside hospital wards and in 2000 she wrote that she had organised ‘several exhibitions’ about her experiences in psychiatric hospitals. We hope one day it may be possible to piece together more of her exhibitions.

This is the end of track three. The tactile path continues to your right towards the next section of the exhibition.

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Audrey Amiss_track 04_view from front window

This page has been pulled out from a sketchbook. In the bottom right-hand corner, ‘A J A’ is visible; these are Audrey Amiss’s initials.

Amiss always linked her art to real life. She painted and drew what she saw.

Looking at this artwork, it is not completely clear…

The blue part could be the sky.
The yellow part could represent sunlight or autumn leaves.
The wavy lines could suggest tree trunks.

Overall, it looks delicate and beautiful.

You are now at the start of the third section of the exhibition, which is called ‘Drawings and Paintings from the 1960s’, named after an exhibition Amiss put on in 1989.

Here we have reassembled 24 of the 30 artworks she exhibited in that show, most of which depict objects from Amiss’s domestic space, as well as views from the window.

The first work in the section is exhibited on a small partition wall about 75 cm wide. In the centre of the wall – inset like a window into it – is a page from a sketchbook, displayed in portrait format inside a pale wooden frame.

According to the typed price list that Amiss made for this exhibition in 1989, it is called ‘Front: View from Front Window’. The frame measures 46 x 38 cm, taller than it is wide. The sketchbook page itself is much smaller and is mounted inside the frame so that the row of punched holes from the spiral binding of the sketchbook are still showing across the top of the page.

A watercolour painting fills the paper. There are three roughly horizontal washes of colour: bluey-purple at the top, dark yellow in the middle, and grassy green at the base. To the left of the page, sandwiched between the yellow and green layers, is a small patch of vivid blue, perhaps representing water. 

Drawn in pencil over these patches of colour is a grid of wavy lines. They suggest the bare trunks and branches of three trees that have lost their leaves, backlit by a colourful sky. The artist has written her initials, A J A, in pencil in the bottom right-hand corner.

Like half of the sketchbook pages Amiss exhibited in ‘Drawings and Watercolours from the 1960s’, there are artworks on both sides of the paper. This is reflected on the price list, where each of their titles is prefixed either with the word ‘front’ or ‘back’. To ensure both sides were visible, Amiss adapted a conventional picture frame by removing the backboard and using white tape to give the impression of a mount.

On first seeing these two-sided works in the archive, it was unclear how Amiss could have exhibited them to show both sides. However, during the research process we reached out to the venue of the exhibition – Dance Attic Studios – who kindly shared a photograph of another exhibition they hosted around the same time by a different artist.

The photo shows that artworks were hung on long cord from a high picture rail, suggesting that for these double-sided works, the frame could be hung to show one side of the work, but then the long cord would allow for Amiss or a visitor to turn the frame around, making the other side visible instead. 

Here we’ve built a slim temporary wall with the artworks set into it like windows so that both sides of the works can be displayed – this side of the wall shows the fronts of each work, and on the other side of this wall is where you’ll find the backs of those same works. 

This is the end of track four. The tactile path continues to your right slightly and then straight ahead of you, along the perimeter of the wall displaying these two-sided works and around to the other side, where the next track focuses on the back of one of these works.

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Looking at this artwork, you will notice a blue outline. It comes from a UK magazine called Private Eye, which focuses on news and current affairs.

Audrey Amiss really liked using her sketchbooks; she would draw, tear out the page, and display it as art.

However, this one is different, as it has artwork on both sides of the paper, so you can see both sides.

Normally, a picture frame has an image between the glass and a backboard, so you would not be able to see anything from the back. Amiss chose to remove the backboard so that both sides of the artwork are visible.

If you want to see the other side, you can walk around the wall.

You are now on the other side of the wall that houses the double-sided artworks from ‘Drawings and Watercolours from the 1960s’. On your way here, you will have walked past a framed sketchbook page inset into the wall on your left which is an artwork called Front: Bookcase.  On your left now is the drawing on the other side of that same sketchbook page. It is called ‘Back: Interior with “Private Eye”’.

This time, the row of perforations from the sketchbook’s spiral binding runs down the right-hand side of the page, which is in landscape format.

There is a rectangle in the bottom-right quarter of the page that stands out, as it is mostly bare paper. It represents a copy of the satirical magazine Private Eye. The title letters ‘Private Eye’ can only just be made out across the top edge, and below it, a blue outline frames where the cover image would be. It contains a couple of thin black spirals, possibly representing two figures.

The rest of the paper is covered with densely layered pencil markings in black, white and blue. The markings are energetic, creating overlapping lines that form solid areas of colour. At the very top of the page, some thinner, vertical, grey pencil marks are visible behind the thicker black marks, giving an insight into how Amiss built up the drawing in layers.

On the angled label rail in front of you there is a tactile reproduction of the surface texture of this work, where you can feel how Amiss has pressed so firmly with the pencil that it has formed deep grooves in the paper.

A number of other works in this series show a similarly experimental approach to drawing, for example where Amiss has intentionally torn the paper, creating areas you can see through.

This is the end of track five. The tactile path turns sharply behind you to lead towards the next section of the exhibition.

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Audrey Amiss_track 06_malaga scene

Audrey Amiss was an avid traveller, visiting Italy, Nepal, India, South America, Russia and Egypt, mostly in the 1970s and 80s.

On the left, you can see photographs from her trip to Hong Kong in 1985, including images of Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong Harbour.

Amiss also wrote about what happened during this trip. It was cut short when she was arrested and deported back to the UK, where she was detained in a psychiatric ward.

On the right, you can see photographs taken in Málaga, Spain. These were exhibited in a 1985 group exhibition called ‘Art Can Damage Your Health’.

She wrote then: “Photography is an offshoot of my painting.”

In these photographs, people are visible but they are not the main focus. Instead, the focus is on shadows, creating an almost abstract image.

You are now in the fourth section of the exhibition, called ‘Fireworks: A Protest Exhibition’, the poster for which was described in track 3.

‘Fireworks’ appears to have been the first time Amiss used an exhibition of her works to raise awareness of the harm that she and other survivors had experienced in psychiatric systems. She wrote in February 1989: .... “I intend to cause more trouble with my protest exhibition ‘Fireworks’, which I’m due to hang next Sunday, if I last that long.”

In the archive there was a price list Amiss made for this exhibition, listing the names of each work she exhibited. Using this, we were able to track down 26 of the 49 works.

Amiss was a keen traveller, visiting Italy, Nepal, India, Bolivia, Brazil, Russia and Egypt, mostly in the 1970s and 80s. Among the works she showed in ‘Fireworks’ were a series of ten photographs from her time in Hong Kong in the 1980s, and another series of ten photographs from a holiday in Málaga in 1959.

These two photographic series are displayed on the wall to your left. Each individual photograph is about 20 x 25 cm. They are arranged in two horizontal rows of five photos on each row. I will describe one of the photographs from the Málaga series.

Titled ‘Malaga Scene’, it shows a waterside path in this coastal city in Spain. From the bottom left-hand corner of the frame, a low wall leads the eye towards rocky hills in the distance. They are covered in vegetation. The sky is brilliant blue over the hills towards the left, but to the right the sky is hidden by thick white cloud. The bright sun coming from over the sea to the left makes the low wall cast a very stark shadow, creating the impression of a long black triangle dividing the image along the path.

On the opposite side of the path are piles of stone running parallel to the low wall all the way to the horizon. This could be an additional layer of sea defence, or possibly rubble from demolition, as Málaga was undergoing major change during the time Amiss visited. Beyond this are grand but dilapidated buildings in the old city, possibly scheduled for demolition.

In writing about this work, Amiss focused less on the buildings and more on the people, admiring their resilience in challenging conditions. On the right of the scene there is a man riding a brown donkey along the path towards us, as if heading out of frame towards the right. He wears a suit jacket, and shirt and a brown hat with a brim. He sits awkwardly on the donkey, jostling for space with two traditional large woven baskets. It’s not clear what they contain. Following him along the path is a person with short black hair wearing a white, short-sleeved shirt and black trousers. A child behind them in shorts and an orange top is half turning in the direction of Amiss’s camera.

These are among a number of artworks in Amiss’s ‘Fireworks’ exhibition that do not appear to have a clear connection to protest, along with a series of beautiful watercolours of autumnal trees painted in gold and orange hues, on display to your right.

The more overtly protest-related works that Amiss exhibited in ‘Fireworks’ are now lost, but from her writing we know that they included what she called “graffiti” and described as “framed written statements” such as ‘Psychiatrists are mad’.

This slogan echoes the late-20th-century anti-psychiatry movement, which questioned the legitimacy and ethics of mainstream psychiatry. Whilst here Amiss uses ‘mad’ as an insult and resisted the term herself, she did later affiliate with Mad Pride activism that reclaimed the term.

Although these graffiti signs have not been found, we believe they were similar in appearance to those in the display case on the wall opposite, which the tactile path leads to next.

This is the end of stop six. The tactile path turns behind you to lead back out of this section towards the next.

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Audrey Amiss_track 07_justice for lunatics

Look at this watercolour painting; there are bold words, “Justice for Lunatics”.

The word ‘lunatic’ was used in the past as a medical and legal term, meaning someone who behaved in a dangerous or reckless way. This term was used until the 20th century.

However, Audrey Amiss had her own experiences of mental health. She chose to reclaim the word ‘lunatic’, turning it from something offensive and negative into something she could feel proud of.

In 2002, the government proposed a new Mental Health Bill. Protesters marched in opposition and Amiss described it as a “Human Rights for Lunatics March (that’s it in a nutshell)”.

You are now in the fifth section of this exhibition.

On the wall to your right there is a very large print of a black-and-white photograph of Audrey Amiss at a demonstration in 2002. It is pasted to the wall like wallpaper and is about two metres tall and three metres wide, meaning the people in the scene appear almost life-size.

Amiss is to the right of the image, surrounded by fellow protestors, all of whom hold placards. She has short grey-white hair and is wearing a long white T-shirt. She is holding a sign in each hand: one reads “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and the other reads “live and let live”. There is a group of trees behind the protesters.

This demonstration was against a controversial mental health bill proposed by the government in 2002 that would have increased powers to treat people without their consent and detain people perceived to have certain so-called personality disorders. It was later dropped following intense public criticism.

Underneath the photograph of Amiss at this protest is a display case with material from the archive relating to her campaigning in the early 2000s: on the right is a scrapbook containing clippings from newsletters about mental health survivor demonstrations, meetings and events, and on the left are seven of Amiss’s graffiti signs, including one of those she’s holding in the photograph above. We believe these are similar in style to the missing works from her 1989 ‘Fireworks’ exhibition discussed in the last track.

In one of these graffiti works, in capital letters made with bold, black brushstrokes, Amiss has painted the words “Justice for Lunatics”.

The term ‘lunatics’ was used in medical and legal contexts until the 20th century. It is now considered offensive and commonly used to stigmatise mental health survivors. However, here Amiss is reclaiming the term as a survivor herself.

Each word is painted on a separate line – justice / for / lunatics – and the whole phrase is punctuated with a full stop.

Some letters are slightly translucent, as if made with watered-down ink. Others are more opaque, suggesting Amiss used a drier paint mix, leaving feathery edges from the individual bristles of her paintbrush. A tactile reproduction on an angled label rail in front of you can help you feel how the words are painted.

There are slight smudge marks on the bottom right of the paper, suggesting that as well as being an artwork, this was also used by Amiss at protests. This reflects her active involvement with what she called the mental health survivor movement. She wrote in 2002 ... “I now have contact with the Manic Depression Fellowship Self-Help Group, the Critical Mental Health Forum, Mad Pride, and LUV (Lambeth User Voice)”. She also engaged with Survivors Speak Out.

This is the end of track seven. The tactile path continues to your left to the final section of the exhibition.

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Audrey Amiss_track 08_drawings locked ward

While in a locked ward, Audrey Amiss created drawings, and later used this poster to promote an exhibition to show her artworks.

The exhibition was created as part of her campaigning for better mental health care.

The Wellcome Collection archive includes Amiss’s 2002 record books, such as finances, invoices and letters, which show that she mailed copies of the poster to many mental health organisations to promote the exhibition.

What you see here is not the original poster, as it is a photocopy.

We hoped to find the original drawing, so we carried out further research.

The 2002 date on this poster suggests that the original drawing may have been in one of Amiss’s 2001 sketchbooks in the Wellcome archive, but we were unable to find it.

Poster for ‘Drawings from a Locked Ward’

You are now in the final section of Audrey Amiss: The Surviving Exhibitions. It takes the form of a small room measuring just over 5m by 3m. The focus of this section is the exhibition ‘Drawings from a Locked Ward (“The Snakepit”)’, which Amiss made in 2002.

When explaining this exhibition, Amiss wrote:

“I have referred to ‘The Snakepit’ in the title of the exhibition. That, if you remember, is an old Hollywood film about a woman who gets trapped in a madhouse and can’t get out because no one will believe a word she says.

“With the introduction of the NHS and calling these places by a more moderate name, i.e. mental hospitals, they would, I suppose, have us believe ‘Snakepits’ are a thing of the past. Not so. They are still very much with us.”

The design of this room is reminiscent of the venue Amiss showed her exhibition in, which had two tall, symmetrical windows with dark wood frames, looking out at the British Museum. In the space you are in now, the exhibition architects have adapted these to window seats, which provide a view through to Rudy Loewe’s exhibition next door.

Between you and these windows is a large display case inset into the wall on your right. This houses items of ephemera from Amiss’s archive, including a poster which advertises ‘Drawings from a Locked Ward’.

The poster is A4 in size and is made up of three elements: a block of text at the top and bottom, separated by a line drawing of a figure in the centre. This poster was our first clue in trying to piece the exhibition back together, along with a price list that included all the titles of the artworks.

The text at the top of the poster, handwritten in ballpoint pen, spells out in capitals Gallery Forty-Seven, followed by the address in Bloomsbury, London.

The handwritten text at the bottom gives more details of the exhibition, including the dates, which were 22 July to 2 August 2002.

The drawing in the middle captures in a few simple lines the outline of a woman, sitting with her head leant forwards. Her posture suggests exhaustion or despair. A handwritten caption above the image reads “‘Joyce’ down-cast” then the initials “A J A” and the date “2.1.2001”. The name Joyce is in inverted commas.

When we looked at this poster in the archive, hoping to find clues about what Amiss had exhibited in it, the date on this image seemed to suggest that the original drawing may be in one of Amiss’s 2001 sketchbooks.

We looked at her sketchbooks from this period in the Wellcome Collection archive but didn’t find a drawing like this.

The rest of the material in the display case charts the research process by which we searched for this and the other works from ‘Drawings from a Locked Ward’. This includes an invoice and magazine that shows how Amiss used professional marketing methods to advertise her exhibitions and raise awareness about psychiatric survivors’ experiences, and a set of sketchbooks which provided important insights about how Amiss made her exhibitions. What we learned through this process will be discussed in the next track.

This is the end of track eight. The tactile path continues to your left to the final stop in the exhibition.

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As you can see, there is no artwork on the wall because the original works are missing. However, you will notice one drawing that looks like a woman, but it is a replica, not an original by Audrey Amiss.

Amiss had a past exhibition called ‘Drawings from a Locked Ward’, but the original artworks and photocopies now appear to be lost. After the exhibition, the artworks were distributed, some were framed, some were given to charity shops and others were sent to editors of Mad Pride publications, as well as to the police and MPs.

We searched the Wellcome archive to find the original artworks but found nothing. However, we did find a price list, invoices, an account book and letters about the upcoming exhibition, although not the artworks themselves. 

We also found a list of works, references to other sketchbooks that the Wellcome Collection does not hold, references to photocopies showing that she sometimes exhibited copies instead of the original artworks, and scrapbooks that give an insight into her involvement with mental health survivor movements.

So, although we cannot show the original artworks, we have chosen to display blank spaces on the wall with labels instead. The appearance of the original artworks is unknown, but the labels offer some information and allow you to imagine them.

We have set up this space to reflect what the exhibition may have been like. It is a space to gather, raise awareness of psychiatric mistreatment, such as force and detention, and to support greater agency for people with mental health needs. This was being fought for then and it continues today.

You are now at the final stop in this exhibition.

After months of searching the archive and following various potential leads, the artworks Amiss exhibited in ‘Drawings from a Locked Ward (“The Snakepit”)’ have not yet been found.

What the research process did reveal was that the title of Amiss’s exhibition was literal. The works she exhibited were made while detained in a locked ward in January 2001. We also realised this was not her only exhibition of ward drawings, which had also been the focus of an exhibition she made in the year 2000.

Arranged on the wall in front of you are 44 sheets of blank A5 paper. These represent the missing works from ‘Drawings from a Locked Ward’. The labels underneath give their titles, which we know thanks to the exhibition price list in the archive. Their names suggest that the subjects of the drawings varied from views out of the window to figurative studies of nurses and other people detained in the ward, and objects around the ward, such as plants and office chairs.

We do know what one of these works looked like because it was reproduced on the poster discussed on the last track. A reproduction of that drawing is shown here among the lost works.

This display of missing works was developed in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust Mental Health Team’s Lived Experience advisors, who highlighted the importance of remembering such survivor-led projects even in their absence, due to long histories of erasure.

You’ll now hear from some lived-experience perspectives on these missing works from ‘Drawings from a Locked Ward’, starting with artist Dolly Sen, who met Audrey Amiss through Survivors Speak Out.

“Walls walls, a mad person, a psych patient knows about walls. Walls that trap you inside, whether it’s the walls of a locked ward, or the walls surrounding our hearts, minds and selves. These walls that separate, you do not know our story. You do not know Audrey or me, or other survivors through our patient notes. You will not find us here. Audrey made the walls surrounding her beautiful, meaningful, something that was her own. Us psychiatric patients are not allowed to tell our story without redaction, erasure, without being judged inferior.

“Everything we seem to do is seen as sickness, when all we want to say is that we have been here too, that we are human and understand beauty. So erased art should have its walls. Audrey should have her exhibition of work no longer here, because it’s an exhibition of the continuing erasure of society, of the art and story of survivors to say we are here too, and society, you have taken already too much from us.

“I wonder if the artwork ‘View Across the River’ is an artistic rendering of the view from a psych ward at St Thomas’ Hospital in south London; it’s no longer there, by the way. I stayed there myself in July 2005. I used to hang around the windows looking at the river, for its beauty, for its promise of freedom, for its glow. It was more therapeutic to our souls than anything that was on the wrong side of the windows we looked out upon.

“And the artwork ‘Two Pillows’, I think, it was her artistic response to items and people on a locked ward. And I think she wanted to capture the sadness, the loneliness, the pain, the grasping at dignity in just a few lines. Lines that captured a world people turned their backs on. A mark-making onto enforce a happiness. Items on a locked ward just carry a pain that’s not on the outside. ‘Two Pillows’ I think, express loneliness, isolation, the wrinkles on the pillowcase were holding dreams the world didn’t care about.”

“My name is Tania Pandia and I am a Lived Experience Advisor for the Mental Health team at Wellcome. Personally, I have never been hospitalised in a psychiatric institution, but looking at Audrey’s works, and her effort to exhibit them, to some extent I think I understand I recognise and understand that existential desire to meticulously document one’s own life. It’s an effort to reaffirm to oneself that I exist, and I am real, and this is all significant to me. 

“It’s also a way to remind others that people like me exist in this world, that our struggle is also part of the human condition. We are not invisible. To ignore this is to ignore many others who have walked my path. To ignore this is to omit a large and constant part of human civilisation. Staying in the ward wasn’t just one flat and stigmatised experience of contending with one’s own sanity. It’s also consisted of the mundane details, the quiet reflections, nurses and doctors passing by. 

Audrey Amiss: The Surviving Exhibitions

Audio highlight tour with transcripts

Introduction to access resources

Introduction to the exhibition and ‘Orchestra’

Open Exhibitions

Poster for Fireworks

View from Front Window

Interior with ‘Private Eye’

Malaga scene

Justice for Lunatics

Poster for ‘Drawings from a Locked Ward’

Missing artworks