The community exhibition showing why art is for everyone

The Southgate Club is providing a space for people in care to express themselves through art, writes Leah Renz

The community art exhibition at The Southgate Club

When I first meet her, The Duchess is wearing sparkly trainers. She is dressed up for the opening of the community artwork exhibition at The Southgate Club.

Every six weeks the hanging committee – an ominous-sounding, but thankfully harmless group of club members – refreshes the walls with new works of art.

This summer, the space is decorated with pieces by 20 artists from a local mental health trust, Bourne Hill Care Home and Queen Anne Care. The paintings are created in weekly art sessions run by the charity Friends of Broomfield Park.

The Duchess attends the art workshops at least once a week, for an hour on Wednesday afternoons, and often on Friday afternoons too. Though visually impaired, she does painting, pottery and knitting. “I’m trying everything out, and if it doesn’t work, I just forget about it”, she says.

One of my favourite of her pieces is a painting of four pink tulips created with fork head imprints. Her signature, on every piece, is a small pink heart, created with two fingerprints. “If I didn’t have the art, I’d probably go to sleep,” she says, cackling.

During the exhibition opening at The Southgate Club, one artist is busily drawing at a table by the window. Within moments of entering, he begins working on a portrait, and by the time I’ve finished making my introductions, he hands me the completed work – a picture of me. When I ask how many portraits he draws in a day, he replies “thousands” with a grin. He drew five portraits this morning while waiting for the kettle to boil.

“I just get inspiration,” he says. He mostly draws people, and sometimes horses. Of David March, the art workshop organiser, he says he makes nice coffee. His favourite artists are romantic painter John Constable and Vincent Van Gogh. He frequently signs his work under their names, or sometimes Elvis Presley.

Claude-may Fournier, director of Bourne Hill Care Home, began collaborating with David March on the art classes two years ago. She believes classes and exhibitions like this one are essential for empowering her clients, and for celebrating different ways of seeing the world.

The care home clients have “a very interesting vision of life”. She would like to see “a different era of appreciating art” in which neurodivergent and neurotypical artists are creating and displaying their works side by side.

“Often parents feel embarrassed [of their children],” for their neurodivergence, Fournier says. The community art workshops and gallery provide a “safe space” where “parents can be who they are and children can be who they are as well”.

“It really works because it is not institutionalised, not an expensive group of mental health support. This really comes from the heart.”

Fournier tells me it is amazing to see how one client, Professor L, who presents with speech impairment, expresses himself through art. His self-portrait, on display at The Southgate Club, was quickly snapped up by a local artist.

Gentleman J also creates art with his carer, Said, every Wednesday. “We do our best,” says Said modestly, before proudly showing me a colourful block of buildings he and Gentleman J had drawn together. One of J’s other works was sold earlier that day – a lino printed tree with leaf imprints.

Marek Pospieszalski, chair of The Southgate Club, leased the building out for free for the exhibition opening. Events like this one make him proud because it continues the legacy of the space. He says: “Historically, the club was here for the community, and it’s maintained all the ideals of the founder.”

The Duchess also knits tablecloths and makes butter dishes to sell for charity. “There’s so much trouble in the world these days, isn’t there?” she says, uncharacteristically solemn. “It sometimes upsets me, the world, so I try and solve it all.”

The artwork of the clients decorates Bourne Hill Care Home too. The living room is watched over by a multimedia artwork of Queen Elizabeth II, her hair a coiffure of white cotton fluff and her crown outlined in sparkly jelly pens, and from the ceiling hang homemade paper daisies.

Another client, Princess, shows me one of her artworks; it’s a bright blue sky with white paint splashes – the splotches streaking across the page in the style of US contemporary artist Jackson Pollock, Princess’ favourite artist. She aspires to make as much art as he did and so far, she’s made 13 pieces with “99 to go”.

The art workshops are entirely funded by the Friends of Broomfield Park charity. Bourne Hill Care plans to continue running similar programmes and seek local authority support to “carry the legacy” forward.

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