Quentin Blake: The Hospital Drawings - extended until 31 May 2016

In 2005, the Nightingale Project invited Quentin Blake to contribute a set of drawings to brighten up Kershaw Ward, an older adults' mental health unit at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital in London.  This led to many more collaborations with the Nightingale Project for the benefit of hospitals in the Central and North West London NHS Trust.  This exhibition comprises a selection of work that Quentin has created over the last decade, working in these NHS sites around the London area.

Quentin writes: "It is almost exactly ten years since I met Steve Barnham and Nick Rhodes, the Directors of the Nightingale Project, in Carluccio's cafe on the Fulham Road, when they invited me to provide some pictures for the elderly patients' ward which was being refurbished in the South Kensington and Chelsea Mental Health Centre, a few minutes' walk away in Nightingale Place.  I had no hesitation in taking on the task; what I didn't comprehend on that, for me, memorable occasion was that it was to be only the first in a sequence of such ventures, and open up a whole new chapter of my work.  Since then I have undertaken several sequences of pictures for the Nightingale Project, for a variety of mental health situations and, eventually, for patients of every age.  I feel privileged to have been given these remarkable opportunities, and proud and pleased to see so many examples from all of them gathered together now in this exhibition."

The exhibition is on display at South Kensington and Chelsea Mental Health Centre (alongside Chelsea and Westminster Hospital), 1 Nightingale Place, London SW10 9NG.  Opening hours are Monday to Friday, 9 am - 6 pm, and the exhibition will continue until 31 May 2016.

For further details about the work of the Nightingale Project, see www.nightingaleproject.org.

Visit our 'Quentin in Action' page to see a video about the exhibition