New Bridget Riley Mural at St. Mary’s Hospital, London

Bridget Riley has created another stunning hospital installation, this time at St. Mary’s Hospital in Paddington. Work on the mural (physical work at the hospital – not design and preparation) started in September of last year (2013); the completed work was unveiled at the end of February 2014.

This is the second time that Bridget Riley has created a mural at a hospital – the first being in 1983 at the Royal Liverpool Hospital (you can see a photo of that installation on the Bridget Riley page). 

Of the mural, Bridget Riley said: ‘The hospital corridor paintings embrace the whole space; they aim to lift the spirits and to remind one of the life outside the hospital, while in no way interfering with the essential activities which must go on.‘ Sadly Bridget has had a lot of experience of hospitals. Fresh out of Goldsmith’s College, she spent 2 years nursing her father who had been involved in a very serious car accident, and I can’t help but feel these murals are an attempt by Bridget to give something back to the places that helped her father.

Rosemary Harris, the curator of the Imperial College Healthcare Charity Art Collection said: ‘The murals are stunning. They are really wonderful works which have transformed the clinical environment into an uplifting and beautiful place for patients and staff.’  That much is clear from the photos below which run from the preparatory work (you can see Bridget Riley in the first two images with paper mock-ups of the installation) right through to the final result.