Maze
On 22nd July 2023 artist Beth Hopkins went into the woods at Bethlem Royal Hospital.
She created a temporary sculpture, making connections between the trees with string. The sculpture went up and came down in one day. It was commissioned by Bethlem Gallery on behalf of King’s College London.
‘The piece is about the paths that you walk on with an illness and the tangles you can get in - and recovery being almost, for me anyway, an untangling process - making sense of what’s happened to you, and building up your sense of self again because when you get ill it can be an unravelling of your identity and your sense of who you are.’
Maze explores the idea that the mental health system can be a complex network to move through, and was commissioned by Bethlem Gallery and KCL as part of a project developing Advance Choice Documents
Beth Hopkins, Artist
'If you take a ball string with you on the way into a maze, you can trace your path and you’ll find your way out. You can lose your identity in bipolar, your personality can shift. An Advance Choice Document, written when you’re well, can be a guide when you’re in crisis, to help you find a way back to yourself.’
Gallery
The story behind the work
I wanted to make a sculpture that spoke about identity - the loss of it and finding a way back to a sense of who you are.
The process of going back and forth between the branches was like living through many recurring days, the lines like well-trodden neural pathways and repetitive thoughts. The tree was a host for the sculpture - there was one central point where the string converged, and lines spread out from here.
Working within the hospital grounds came with some restrictions. The sculpture couldn’t be left unattended, and had to go up and come down in one day. This was a way to protect the patients, as the string was a ligature risk. I had to cut the string down when it began to rain heavily.
The title of this piece is MAZE, the maze of the disorder and the unnamed sense of threat at the core.
The mental health system can be a complex network to move through. An Advance Choice Document can help the people who care for you understand what you need when you need it, and ensure you receive treatment that is right for you.
~ Beth Hopkins
Further information
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www.bethlemgallery.com
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https://bethhopkins.weebly.com