Due to COVID-19, we have temporarily suspended aspects of our art and design programme for the wellbeing of patients and staff. However, we continue to work with new artists remotely to develop exciting upcoming projects. In the meantime, we hope that our existing interventions at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and at West Middlesex University Hospital continue to promote healing and positivity for patients and staff during these unprecedented times.
In collaboration with Kensington and Chelsea Art Week (KCAW), we are delighted to be working with popular London based artist Yinka Ilori on a large-scale commission for our Emergency Department at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.
Yinka is a multidisciplinary artist, who specialises in storytelling by fusing his British and Nigerian heritage to tell new stories in contemporary design. He studied Furniture and Product Design at London Metropolitan University and has since exhibited internationally in solo shows. In 2011, he began his practice by up-cycling and re-upholstering vintage furniture, inspired by the traditional Nigerian parables and West African fabrics that surrounded him as a child, but with a humorous, provocative and fun edge that make his pieces unique and encourage playful conversation. In 2017, Yinka Ilori Studio was established following a successful pitch to transform the Thessaly Road Bridge.
The Emergency Department at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital hosts many departments within. These include Triage, the Urgent Care Centre, Paediatric (Children’s) Accident and Emergency, Majors, the Emergency Mental Health Room and Ambulatory Emergency Care.
For his project with CW+, Yinka will be creating an environment that supports patient, staff and visitor wellbeing at a time of high stress, by bringing exciting, colourful and positive designs into the Emergency Department main waiting area, the connecting corridor leading to Majors and the Ambulatory Emergency Care Department.
“I’m really honoured and excited to be working on this commission. Over the years I have worked on a number of art commissions but this one is extremely important, more than ever with whats happening in todays world. I hope it brings joy, peace and calmness into peoples lives, today, forever and in times of need” – Yinka Ilori
In addition to his commission for the Emergency Department, ‘Better Days Are Coming, I promise’ is a project by Yinka in response to COVID-19 in support of CW+ and in collaboration with Kensington and Chelsea Art Week to create temporary and permanent public art installations in West London. Yinka has created this street art piece on a poster space located at Blackfriars in Southwark, which takes inspiration from the sketches for the ED department at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.
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