Art in Site were commissioned to curate the art for the the 60m Morriston Hospital Outpatients building. Our art scheme celebrates local identity geography, and social history, as well as providing a sense of orientation around the space.
Local artist, Katie Allen – who exhibits internationally, drew on the hospital’s location in the countryside just outside Swansea, with images of the landscape emphasizing Morriston’s stepped hillside locations, featuring: Three Cliffs Bay; typical woodland valleys; hillsides; moorland and an image of sky framed by cherry blossom.
These distinct landscape categories play a role in the wayfinding strategy for the building: each floor of the building is curated to match the corresponding step in the landscape, with the ground floor featuring ground-level scenes such as the beach and the upper floors feature scenes of the sky.
The rich cultural and social history of the area was brought to life in verse and imagery carved into giant bench frames designed by Art in Site. This was a collaboration between four local poets with illustrator David Jones. The poems inscribed feature various local touches, including the use of gnomic verse – a type of Welsh Haiku – and one poem in the local dialect of the estate across from the hospital.
Other illustrations by David Jones feature across the hospital, brining humour and stimulation to waiting spaces and corridors.
Alan Goulbourne’s white sculptures’, – which hang from the wall and celling of the waiting area – are designed to appear like the fractured patterns of striated rock in the Welsh coastline. They also play an important role of softening the acoustics in a busy, cavernous, space – thereby making the patient experience more comfortable on both the eye and ear.
Goulbourne’s piece was a result of a close collaboration between sound engineers, estates, contractors, and artist, whose combined expertise has resulted in a fusion of visual art and sound engineering.
Art in Site commissioned Swansea University illustration graduate Danielle Arbrey to create the cut paper illustrations which decorate pediatrics. Danielle carried out her research through a number of collaborative workshops with children, in which they discussed journeys they took on a daily basis and what animals triggered their imaginations.
Playworkers and clinicians told us that children enjoyed playing in the waiting room, so we designed a tablet app that takes Danielle’s song birds and allows children to send them between different devices. A child can play with the birds in the waiting room, or send their favourite to the clinician and find the same bird, waiting for them (digitally) in the consulting room.
Additionally, Art in Site commissioned and coordinated a stained glass memorial dedicated to organ donors. This piece is the result of conversations between spiritual and pastoral care providers in the hospital (led by Rev. Nigel Jenkins), donor recipients and families of donors, as well as the artist and poet. Each of these groups were brought together to input ideas for the piece, which eventually was agreed upon as a stained glass design (fabricated by Simon Howard, designed by Katie Allen), with a poem encircling the glass (written by local pet Menna Elfyn).
The Organ Donantion memorial greets patients and visitors to Morriston Hospital... The specially commissioned installation, in the corridor connecting the new outpatients’ area with the rest of the hospital, is a poignant memorial to the life-saving contribution donors have made across ABMU.
- ABM Helathboard, NHS
Date 2011 - 2015
Sector Healthcare
Service Hospital, Outpatients
Commissioned by AMB Healthboard, Wales
Artists Katie Allen, Alan Goulbourne, David Jones, Danielle Arbrey
Users Adult and Child patients
Awards BBH Awards 2016: Highly Commended, Best Collaborative Arts; Highly Commended, Patient’s Choice
