Health to take centre stage in Hocken’s latest exhibition

From health promotion and disease prevention, to institutional architecture, patient care, and treatment, the connection between art and health is explored in Primary Care.

The latest exhibition at Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena brings together a selection of artworks, photographs, ephemera and archival materials largely gathered from across its collections.

Each piece considers aspects of physical, spiritual, community, mental and public health.

Curator Art - Pictorial Collections Andrea Bell says pieces are included by renowned artists Simon Denny, Giovanni Intra, Robyn Kahukiwa, Robert Rauschenberg, Ava Seymour, Ann Shelton, Heather Straka, Lionel Terry, Robin White and more.

“With works relating to health promotion and disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment, patient education, deinstitutionalization, community care, and Māori health, the exhibition represents a range of approaches to health and wellbeing, and developments in the medical field,” she says.

One particular artwork which continues to resonate is Seymour’s Corsorphine Queen from her 1998 series Health, Happiness and Housing. Using photographs of state houses from around New Zealand, overlaid with distorted collage figures, the work suggests the deterioration of the social dream of state housing.

Also included is one of Dunedin Public Hospital’s most treasured artworks by Robin White, with a simple message carried in the work’s title: “Your health is your wealth”.

Primary Care will be showing at Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, 90 Anzac Ave, Dunedin, from 30 June – 25 August 2018. The exhibition will be open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm.