Academicians in Focus: Timothy Hyman RA
A year with Maggie's
30 April - 22 October 2015
Belle Shenkman Room, The Keeper’s House, Royal Academy
Friends, Patrons & Corporate Members have access from 10am, general public from 4pm.
Monday to Thursday 10am – 6pm
Friday 10am – 10pm
Saturday 10am – 8pm
Sunday 10am – 6pm
Please note we will be closing early on Wednesday 3 June. Last entry to the galleries will be at 12.30pm.
Admission free
Friends of the RA go free
This exhibition assembles some of the poignant and characterful drawings and paintings resulting from Timothy Hyman’s 60 visits to Maggie’s Centres as part of an artist’s residency from 2011–12.
Maggie’s Centres provide free practical, emotional and social support to people with cancer and their family and friends. The first centre opened in Edinburgh in 1996, using a blueprint for cancer care established by Maggie Keswick Jencks before her death in June 1995. Since then the charity has commissioned a sequence of outstanding, modestly-scaled buildings sited alongside NHS hospitals; many being designed by major architects, often without fee.
A moving and sensitive portrayal of the inner life of the centres, this exhibition celebrates those who benefit from them – their gatherings, preoccupations, and individual journeys – and explores the essence of the buildings both spiritually and structurally.
All works are available for sale and a selection can be found in the RA’s online shop. Find out more about Art Sales at the RA, ask at the Membership Desk in the Keeper’s House or call 020 7300 5933 or 020 7300 5741.
My year with Maggie’s has been among the most privileged experiences of my art-life, and I want to dedicate these drawings to the extraordinarily courageous individuals I encountered – both staff and ‘users’.
Timothy Hyman RA, 2014
Gallery
Timothy Hyman: A year with Maggie’s
This book, available online from the RA Shop, records Timothy Hyman's reflections on the people he met at the London Maggie's Centre during his 2011 residency, and the drawings and paintings he made there. Having himself been touched by cancer through the death of his twin brother twelve years earlier, Hyman sensitively captures the experiences of the Centre’s residents and the rhythms of the Centre's daily life.
While not always an easy journey, A Year with Maggie’s is an intimate meditation on the determination to not "lose the joy of living in the fear of dying."