Artists at Bell House

BELL HOUSE, 27 COLLEGE ROAD, DULWICH – ARTISTS’ OPEN HOUSE

13 & 14 May 2017, 11am to 6pm

PICTURE THIS…   

An exhibition of works on paper by artists who identify as being dyslexic

Curated by Kim Thornton

For the first time Bell House in Dulwich will open its doors to the public to take part in the Dulwich Festival Artists’ Open House showing work by artists who indentify as being dyslexic.  Referencing the history of the house, commissioned in 1767 by Thomas Wright a poor warehouse worker who started his own lucrative publishing business, the works from Lucy Bainbridge, Sophie Eade, Jane Higginbottom, Alice Irwin, Valeriya N-Georg and Lucy Soni will be on paper.

Both Lucy Soni and Alice Irwin throw off the constraints of the structured world drawing on children’s play and everyday chance in their work.  In contrast, Valeriya N-Georg turns to quantum physics to investigate the boundaries between the human body and the inner self.  

Lucy Bainbridge, Jane Higginbottom and Sophie Eade are all creating their own realities through their study of the environment they live in.  Lucy Bainbridge tries to pause time with her softened city prints whilst Sophie Eade eradicates urbanity and words from the magazine pages that purport to extol rural life.  Jane Higginbottom studies the environment and measures time through nature.

Bell House will also host an artist in residence in a doll’s house, The Sophie Croxton Doll House Gallery.  The project is conceived and curated by Sophie Eade and Lucy Soni. who have awarded the Picture This… residency to painter Clare Price.

The origin of the word ‘dyslexia’ comes from the German dys- ‘difficult’ and the Greek word lexis ‘speech’.  Although this difficulty with words that affects reading, spelling and writing, defines the dyslexic learning process, dyslexia is really about information processing.  People with dyslexia have a different way of thinking, often thinking in pictures rather words.  As a result they frequently have strong visual and creative skills. Click to Events for artist details.

Bell House and Dulwich Picture Gallery

Bell House has had associations with the Dulwich Picture Gallery over a long period and there were even plans to store the DPG paintings at the house during the war to protect them from bombing, although in the end other arrangements were made.  Bell House and the Gallery have been part of the Dulwich Estate for many years and the freeholds were owned by the Dulwich Estate from 1767, when Bell House was built, until 1992 when the house was sold to a private owner.

Recently the Dulwich Picture Gallery has been very energetically managed and is in the process or organising a pavilion for the summer of 2017. Bell House supported the planning application for this creative experiment and is enthusiastic about the community involvement that this will bring.

Bell House has another special link with the Gallery as the Deputy Director of the Gallery, Andrew Macdonald, was a boarder at Bell House when it was a junior boarding house for Dulwich College.  He has recently revisited and gave a graphic description of what life was like for a young boy sleeping in the dormitories and walking up to the main school for lessons and sports.

The Picture Gallery has recently appointed a new chair of trustees (Prof Evelyn Welch) and a new director - Jennifer Scott who plans to "develop the gallery as the perfect place for people to experience the inspirational potential of art."  We hope that Bell House will be able to work with the Picture Gallery to develop an appreciation for art and to provide courses that are not easily available elsewhere.   Also, events at Bell House could compliment what the Picture Gallery already does - perhaps concentrating on photography, film and local artists.  Indeed Bell House has recently organised an exhibition of local artists with themes of paper and dyslexia as part of the Dulwich Festival.     

image courtesy of Dulwich Picture Gallery        

The City of London Lying-In Hospital, as Thomas Wright knew it.

The weekly board meetings were held at coffee houses until a purpose-built hospital was erected near Old Street roundabout and each week about a dozen new mothers would be brought before the board (or Court as it was known) to ‘return thanks’ for the benevolence they had been shown. Other mothers attended to be admonished for their bad conduct while staying at the hospital. There is no record of what this bad conduct was but the rules for patients were very strict and they were inpatients for a long time, at least six weeks according to the regulations, though this must often have been shortened as most families would not have been able to do without a mother for so long.

From four days after delivery women needed matron’s permission to lie down on their beds and they were expected to produce needlework for the hospital from three weeks after delivering their child. Women in labour, expectant women and newly-delivered mothers were all in the same ward: when a separate room for labour was suggested it was vetoed in case the patients suspected experiments might be performed on them.

Mortality at all hospitals was high due to the lack of hygiene. ‘Childbed fever’ as post-partum infection was known, was usually caused by the doctors themselves and during the time Thomas was involved the hospital had to be closed temporarily due to rampant infection which must have been difficult given the need for the services the hospital offered. It would not be until the 1850s that simple precautions like handwashing would bring down the numbers of post-natal deaths.

Vermin such as bedbugs and mice were a constant issue, as was alcohol abuse, and as president Thomas had to ban the drinking of porter in the hospital due to its ‘evil effects’. Other issues he had to rule on included the lack of lighting at night - his solution of one candle per ward per night is surprising to us as it must still have been very dark. He also stopped the long-term practice of patients having to buy the nurses tea and sugar, he raised the nurses’ wages to include an allowance so that they could buy their own. Thomas was a generous benefactor: his usual donation of £20 can be seen in the donation lists again and again, when most people were donating around £5 and of course he donated his time and business expertise. Both he and William Gill were later presented with ‘staffs’ and made governors for life, a sign of devoted service to the hospital. 

Source: Wikiwand

When Thomas was president of the hospital one of its senior physicians was Dr Lettsom of Camberwell and it is tempting to suppose they were friends, given that they also lived in south London at a time when there were far fewer houses in the area. Dr Lettsom was involved with the hospital for many years and was a noted philanthropist and a supporter of the abolition of slaves.

Thomas Wright and the City of London Lying-In Hospital

Together with his business partner and brother-in-law, William Gill, Thomas was active in several London hospital charities which provided for the poor of London. He was a governor of St Thomas’s Hospital but the hospital he was most involved in was the City of London Lying-in Hospital, one of the first maternity hospitals in London.

Thomas first became involved with ‘this humane and useful institution’, which provided maternity services for the wives of poor tradesmen, in the 1770s when he joined the board in return for a donation of 10 guineas. He would attend the Sunday baptisms of babies born in the hospital, make donations and attend meetings where the governors would hire staff, sign off on bills and deal with admittance applications: there were always more expectant mothers than beds available.

Charity in the eighteenth century was often moralistic and the hospital was strictly for married women only, single women would not be admitted until 1912. Each governor had the right to nominate patients but all the patients had to prove they were married, were deserving of charity and agree to their new-born being baptised in the hospital chapel.