Four series of pictures by Blake will be displayed throughout the Foundling Museum.
Our Friends in the Circus (2009) series depicts images of senior circus characters – jugglers, tightropewalkers, fire-eaters and clowns – celebrating the longevity of well-practised talents. This series is from amental health ward for older adults at Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow.
Blake’s series Ordinary Life (2010) for the Vincent Square Eating Disorder Clinic, London, celebrates thequiet poetry and pleasures of everyday life. Characters engage in activities such as feeding birds on awindowsill, walking a dog, shopping in a street market and painting a self-portrait.
Planet Zog (2007) sees alien creatures and young people playfully swap doctor andpatient roles. Planet Zog is displayed in waiting areas and public spaces in the Alexandra Avenue Healthand Social Care Centre, South Harrow.
Mothers and Babies Underwater (2011) was created for the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire in Angers, France. The new maternity building is decorated with a seriesof fifty drawings which appear throughout, including the midwife station, father’s room and the deliverysuites. In them, mothers and babies swim together underwater, and look at each other for the first time.It’s a parallel world where their swimming expresses and celebrates their new-found liberty after thepains of labour.
January 12-April 15, £7.50
Foundling Museum, WC1N 1AZ
foundlingmuseum.org.uk
Tube: Russell Square
