Exhibition
BREATHE:2022
14 Oct 2022 – 23 Oct 2022
Regular hours
- Monday
- Closed
- Tuesday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Wednesday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Thursday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Friday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Saturday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Sunday
- 10:00 – 18:00
Free admission
Address
- (Entrance in Duke's Rd)
- Euston Road
- London
- NW1 2BA
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- Tube: Euston or Euston square
About
In 2012 Dryden Goodwin created Breathe, an animation of 1,300 drawings of his 5 year old son inhaling and exhaling, which was projected on the roof of St Thomas’ Hospital opposite the Houses of Parliament. Ten years later, Goodwin has revisited the subject, for Breathe:2022. Six Londoners bear witness to the continued impact of air pollution – and the power of activism – through their bodies and breath. Goodwin, a Lewisham resident, has drawn participants from Lewisham based local activist groups including Choked Up, Mums for Lungs, Clean Air for Catford, The Ella Roberta Foundation, as well as a school child and Goodwin’s now 15 year old son. Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah is one of those drawn, whose nine-year-old daughter Ella suffered a fatal asthma attack in 2013. Rosamund’s campaigning achieved a landmark ruling, in which Ella became the first person in Britain to have air pollution listed as a cause of her death at her inquest.
The Bloomsbury Festival shows 72 images from the over 1,000 drawings enlarged as posters along the Euston Road, one of the most polluted roads in the country. This outdoor exhibition links with wider public displays of the artwork across Lewisham, on buildings, under bridges and next to the South Circular. Also shown at the Wellcome Collection are 90 of the original drawings as part of the In the Air exhibition, which overlaps the first weekend of the Bloomsbury Festival.
Breathe:2022 will culminate in Lewisham in November, as a large outdoor video projection, animating over 1,000 drawings. Breathe:2022 asks us to both stay with the claustrophobia of ‘fighting for breath’ but begin to look upwards and outwards, towards the possibilities of community action and a clean air future for all. Connecting this global health emergency to the daily lives of London residents.
Originally produced by Invisible Dust and commissioned by the Albany for We Are Lewisham. We Are Lewisham is presented by Lewisham Council and the Albany as part of the Mayor’s London Borough of Culture 2022.
