An artwork to help heal

Marzena Wasikowska, a PhD candidate at the ANU School of Art, has successfully delivered a very special artwork to the Canberra Hospital.

Last year, senior students from the School were invited to submit an expression of interest for a challenging commission for the Isolation Ward at the hospital.

The brief for the work was that it needed to embody calm, beauty and hope, keeping in mind that the audience is very ill patients in the ward. It also needed to be designed for display on a screen, which can be easily kept sanitised.

Arts in Health Curator, Dr Jenny McFarlane worked with Dr Martyn Jolly, Head of Photography and Media Arts, to select Marzena Wasikowska out of a strong field, and the concept was further developed with Isolation Ward staff.

“Wasikowska has produced a sublimely restful work a million miles from the usual content of hospital TVs,” said Dr Jolly.

“Her research led her to conceive a work that responded to the sense of time as experienced by the very ill, incorporating moments of hope and joy into a slowly moving montage of images revealing a waterfall panorama.

“Wasikowska’s work was beautiful but also restful, and embodied hope without being overly clichéd.”

Dr McFarlane said the work was a “remarkable” response to the brief, and she is looking forward to trialling the work with patients once it’s installed.

“We’re used to quite high speed information through our media, whether it’s a news broadcast or promotion where images are sequenced quickly, and this can be overstimulating for a very sick person,” she said.

“Wasikowska was able to represent the experience of time as someone who is very ill experiences it – you don’t need to watch the whole thing, and you can tune in and out of it.”

The audience is front and centre when it comes to selecting artwork for the hospital collection.

“My job is to represent the voice of the audience, and I need to find the best work for the needs of that audience,” says Dr McFarlane.

Dr McFarlane says that while it’s common for the hospital to receive donations of artwork, only pieces that are suitable for the environment are added to the collection. They must meet the primary goal of the Canberra Hospital’s arts and health program, which is to enhance the delivery of health service.

This commission was made possible thanks to a generous donor who had spent time as a patient in the Ward and donated money to the Canberra Hospital Foundation to improve the experience of others.