A couple of weeks ago, two of my images went up as framed prints in H2 East at Robina Hospital, the ward that cares for patients in the Acute Cognitive Unit and the Acute Geriatric Unit. Down in the Renal Unit, where patients spend hours at a time in dialysis chairs, something bigger went up too, a wall mural. Seeing my photography printed at that scale, in a space like this, isn't something I take for granted, so once everything was in place I went out to walk through both wards myself.
This isn't the first hospital my work has ended up in, but it had me reflecting more than I expected.
Full circle
My photography career didn't start in a classroom or with a mentor. It started at Kirra Beach, where a surfing accident put me in hospital, and very nearly changed the course of my life in a much harder way. I've written about that before, when I donated a print to the PA Hospital in Brisbane for the team who helped me through it, you can read that story here. Learning to walk again, and later picking up a camera instead of feeling sorry for myself, is the reason any of this exists.
Standing in H2 East, in front of my Tallebudgera Creek print in a ward not unlike the one I once needed myself, was a strange and genuinely rewarding kind of full circle. I didn't expect that when I started out chasing surf shots on the southern Gold Coast all those years ago.
Why a mural in the Renal Unit
Dialysis isn't a quick appointment. Patients in the Renal Unit are often in that chair for hours, several times a week, looking at the same four walls. That's a very different brief to a print in a hallway someone walks past once. We needed something that could hold a person's attention gently, without demanding it, a stretch of coastline calm enough to actually rest your eyes on.
That's Tallebudgera Creek up on the wall, printed at a scale I don't often get to see my own work at. It still doesn't quite feel real seeing it that big, in a room where someone will spend real time looking at it.
The H2 East prints
The two prints in H2 East needed to do a slightly different job, something familiar enough to settle a wandering mind, in a ward that cares for people living with cognitive decline as much as those recovering from illness. The team chose real Gold Coast coastline, the kind of beach a lot of these patients would have grown up around. Tower 1, Snapper Rocks is one of the two, sunlight, sand, a lifeguard tower, nothing that asks too much of you to look at.
More than my own work
Walking through Robina, I loved hearing from the team how each piece in the hospital was chosen and what it means for the ward it hangs in. My prints and the mural are only part of it, the hospital also features work from staff and from other professional photographers throughout the building. It's rare to see a healthcare space put this much thought into what's on its walls, and it was genuinely special to be one small part of it.
Thank you to everyone at Robina Hospital who trusted me with this project, and to the teams in H2 East and the Renal Unit who chose the images and the spaces they'd go. If a patient or a family member gets even a few quiet minutes looking at one of these, that's exactly what we hoped for.
If you're part of a hospital, aged care facility or healthcare practice thinking about something similar for your own space, get in touch, I'd love to talk it through.
You might also like Donating Artwork to the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, or browse the Life's A Beach collection and Gold Coast prints.
