Artwork Launch Party With Live Score

'The Texture of Air' is an obsessively detailed recreation of two lost hospital buildings, led by the artists Laura Mitchison and Olivia Bellas. The hospitals (closed 2019) treated ears, noses, throats, mouths, teeth - and the people behind them.

On this night, and this the night only, a wind quartet perform a live score – their melodies derived from acoustic resonances of the former hospitals.

The other artworks are a permanent commission for a new specialist centre. 

Programme

 6.00 - 6.30pm - drinks reception 

6.30 - 7.15 pm - film screening with live musicians 

7.15 - 8.00pm –panel discussion 

8.00-  8.30pm – artists’ tour of memory traces and sculptures created with the aid of 3D scans and dental casting.

Further Details on The Texture of Air  

The artists began by capturing memories of the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital (est. 1874), and the Eastman Dental Hospital (est. 1930) as they were closing their historic former buildings on the Grays Inn Road. Staff and patients showed them many treasures - a “museum” of ear trumpets, an ark-load of specimens ranging from a pygmy shrew to a giraffe, a Friday knitting club, a cherub fountain, door handles emblazoned with wise owls.

“THETEXTUREOFAIR” is a quote from one of these conversations with a patient who describes losing his sense of smell. Other stories were recorded in laboratories and libraries, clinics and chambers, even while riding a rotating vertigo chair.

An archive of oral history conversations with staff and patients, orginal music, field-recordings and film, can be found here: 

WWW.THETEXTUREOFAIR.UK

The project was run by On the Record and ScreenDeep.  Artists Eloise Hawser and Nicole Robson collaborated on the project. An audio-visual archive was made with the help of Bernadette Devilat,  Adam Mendez, Ben Evans James & Andrew Mark.

 The project was kindly supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, UCLH Arts and Heritage, B-Scan at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Med-el.