Blessed are the cracked for they let in the light.
12th May Nurses Day banners on lawn at front of maudsley hospital.
Back to nursery or Plaque to Nursery
Kintsugi of Xavier Hilts White's Blue Plaque.
Originally made at Bethlem Royal Hospital ceramic's class in 2016, changed to 2018 and finally installed at Maudsley in 2022.
I left it at the Neurosciences Dept at Kings Collage Hospital where I left it for maybe a year, it is close by Mapother House so art in a transit. When I finally got in touch with them to find out if they still had it, they hadn't see it recently but would take a look? They found it but it had got broken. Kathryn felt extremely respouncable but I thought I Charles Polkey drilled in my forehead.
I have long experience of up-cycling for artworks & repairing glass windows so set about mounting the cracked plaque on a board. Repairing or making good an object add's to it's story of human interaction, the history of something is I've always appreciated. A friend told me about the Japanese Kintsugi, where broken ceramic's pieces are repaired with gold strapping, enhancing the repair..
Originally made at Bethlem Royal Hospital ceramic's class in 2016, changed to 2018 and finally installed at Maudsley in 2022.
I left it at the Neurosciences Dept at Kings Collage Hospital where I left it for maybe a year, it is close by Mapother House so art in a transit. When I finally got in touch with them to find out if they still had it, they hadn't see it recently but would take a look? They found it but it had got broken. Kathryn felt extremely respouncable but I thought I Charles Polkey drilled in my forehead.
I have long experience of up-cycling for artworks & repairing glass windows so set about mounting the cracked plaque on a board. Repairing or making good an object add's to it's story of human interaction, the history of something is I've always appreciated. A friend told me about the Japanese Kintsugi, where broken ceramic's pieces are repaired with gold strapping, enhancing the repair..
Plaque to Nursery By Xavier White (Glass Artist)
This year’s April Fool's Day saw me turning up at the wrong place discussing potentials to place a blue plaque on the wall, of what was the specialist neurosurgery unit, but is now a Maudsley’s nursery. 37 years ago this April, I re-learnt to walk & talk in the space that is now King’s Hospital London staff children’s nursery, in Mapother House, on the Maudsley Hospital site. A fool's errand - as these nurseys are next door to each other. There I was at the wrong one. A metaphor of my head injury, as a life of mishaps and mistakes.
Trying again, having lived and learned from my previous mistake, I turned up at the right front door with my hand crafted blue plaque. Good job they loved it!. The next steps were to make contact with estates to establish where I could safely display the piece. I took the opportunity and visited my old room, with a couple of the nursery nurses to escort me. My time there, regaining life skills as best I could, was very surreal and the experience & memories have shaped my life, like childhood memories. The nursing care I received was personal, professional and life affirming…
Then I woke up!
This year’s April Fool's Day saw me turning up at the wrong place discussing potentials to place a blue plaque on the wall, of what was the specialist neurosurgery unit, but is now a Maudsley’s nursery. 37 years ago this April, I re-learnt to walk & talk in the space that is now King’s Hospital London staff children’s nursery, in Mapother House, on the Maudsley Hospital site. A fool's errand - as these nurseys are next door to each other. There I was at the wrong one. A metaphor of my head injury, as a life of mishaps and mistakes.
Trying again, having lived and learned from my previous mistake, I turned up at the right front door with my hand crafted blue plaque. Good job they loved it!. The next steps were to make contact with estates to establish where I could safely display the piece. I took the opportunity and visited my old room, with a couple of the nursery nurses to escort me. My time there, regaining life skills as best I could, was very surreal and the experience & memories have shaped my life, like childhood memories. The nursing care I received was personal, professional and life affirming…
Then I woke up!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RUmTv8z_Z0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RUmTv8z_Z0
Xavier holding plaque in his old room in the then Neurosurgical Ward at Mapother House, Maudsley Hospital.
The first thing I remembered, after coming out of a coma, was my step brother Jay leaning over me and smiling with his front tooth broken. I think I probably remember this because his tooth had been broken in a bicycle accident. The audio visual information perhaps reaffirmed my memory of this. I had just regained consciousness following a 10 day coma, after a near fatal head injury received in, you guessed it, a bicycle accident, I was hit by a car. They crossed me over the road from Kings College Hospital to The Maudsley’s then Specialist Neurosurgical unit in what is now Mapother House.
In the middle of the night I would wake and try to get out of bed but because I couldn’t stand up, I’d fall in a heap & the night nurses would have to come , pick me up off the floor, and put me back into bed. I think I may have done this more than once some nights. Some nights I remember the nurses would sit in the main ward and I would listen to their patter as they chatted through the night. One night I got as far as a cupboard in the room and pulled it over on top of me, soil from a gifted yucca plant going everywhere. What a mess, what a pain.
One night I awoke and I was hallucinating that there were huge creatures from ‘Where The Wild Things Are’, (from the Maurice Sendak book) huge dancing around the wall, years before the movie did it’s own version.
In the middle of the night I would wake and try to get out of bed but because I couldn’t stand up, I’d fall in a heap & the night nurses would have to come , pick me up off the floor, and put me back into bed. I think I may have done this more than once some nights. Some nights I remember the nurses would sit in the main ward and I would listen to their patter as they chatted through the night. One night I got as far as a cupboard in the room and pulled it over on top of me, soil from a gifted yucca plant going everywhere. What a mess, what a pain.
One night I awoke and I was hallucinating that there were huge creatures from ‘Where The Wild Things Are’, (from the Maurice Sendak book) huge dancing around the wall, years before the movie did it’s own version.
Art Therapy Third Man theme tunes
At the end of my inpatient stay, staff nurse Jane Taylor helped me take down all my get well cards and put them all into a chocolate box, my take away. These cards and other items from my stay I complied into a scrape book, creative therapy. The scrap book has just been accepted in the Museum Of the Mind’s archives this year for which I am really grateful.
After all the care I had received I wanted to be a carer / nurse too in my post head injury set.
One day after therapy I sat next to Nurse Graham from the neurosurgical ward on the bus and we spoke about this as a career choice or artist. He said do what you are good at. I still wasn’t too sure.
Artist returns to Maudsley.
My aim at the time of my head injury in 1985 was to study something in the creative field, stained glass most probably. I finally got to realise this ambition in Swansea 2004-08, but that’s another story.
A fellow student there recommend I go for an autistic spectrum test. I finally got round to this, and received an appointment for my test, back at the Maudsley. The results were inconclusive but I received an invite to a feedback meeting this was at the Maudsley’s new ORTUS building with it’s fantastic display cabinets and I thought now I’ve got my degree I could really do an exhibition here.
I rose to the occasion with glass / mirror I’d collected over the years and the help & support of friends & family + ORTUS staff , the Maudsley charity in particular. From the roof terrace at the ORTUS, you can see the room where I was a patient. My old Occupational Therapist Claire, came to the exhibition opening, with her husband – we had met 200 yards away when I was but a dribbling lopsided patient. I called it, Xavier White’s Full Circle (2014) as I left at 19 and was returning all these years later.
After seeing my ‘Cohedia guided tour’ on ‘youtube’, the curator of the Bethlem Gallery asked me to exhibit at the new Gallery space they were having built at the Bethlem Royal Hospital, in Kent. I achieved ‘Cohedia, wish you were here. Xx 2015’ , at the Bethlem Gallery as their first major solo show in this new gallery space. The Bethlem Hospital’s Museum Of the Mind’s curator (upstairs to the Bethlem Gallery) asked me if they could display ‘’Cohedia’ a large canvas in the museum for the Utopia 2016, celebrating the 500th anniversary of Thomas Moore’s book. That same year, the Museum was shortlisted for the Museum of the year award 2016, and I was again involved at the request of the curator to be involved in a photo shoot with the museum staff, by world famous portrait photographer, Rankin. We should have won! But we did get top billing on the Guardian webpage covering the award shortlist of museums.
April 2018, a neurosurgery nurse friend of mine, who works at Kings College Hospital informed me that Kings were naming a new ward after Charles Polkey, my consultant neurosurgeon who came to visit me back in 1985 in my room, and they wanted me to be there. With this invite I was inspired to make Polkey Ward a hand made glass piece, which is now displayed in the ward’s day room, where the nurses take their hand overs, and sit with it watching over them.
I made a cermaic Blue Plaque, at the Bethlem Hospitals ceramics workshop, so it is all in house. It’s taken me 4 years, 2 attempts, and two weeks to get it fitted. During those four years it stayed at King’s neurosciences dept for maybe a year, where it got cracked in to four tidy pieces, slices of ‘plaque cake’. I think it's hilarious. The crack spreads from the V of XAVIER and suits a head injury metaphor, continuing this modus operandi. I secured it to a board to make good for display. It was put in place on Friday 29th April, 2022, nearly 37 years to the day
At the end of my inpatient stay, staff nurse Jane Taylor helped me take down all my get well cards and put them all into a chocolate box, my take away. These cards and other items from my stay I complied into a scrape book, creative therapy. The scrap book has just been accepted in the Museum Of the Mind’s archives this year for which I am really grateful.
After all the care I had received I wanted to be a carer / nurse too in my post head injury set.
One day after therapy I sat next to Nurse Graham from the neurosurgical ward on the bus and we spoke about this as a career choice or artist. He said do what you are good at. I still wasn’t too sure.
Artist returns to Maudsley.
My aim at the time of my head injury in 1985 was to study something in the creative field, stained glass most probably. I finally got to realise this ambition in Swansea 2004-08, but that’s another story.
A fellow student there recommend I go for an autistic spectrum test. I finally got round to this, and received an appointment for my test, back at the Maudsley. The results were inconclusive but I received an invite to a feedback meeting this was at the Maudsley’s new ORTUS building with it’s fantastic display cabinets and I thought now I’ve got my degree I could really do an exhibition here.
I rose to the occasion with glass / mirror I’d collected over the years and the help & support of friends & family + ORTUS staff , the Maudsley charity in particular. From the roof terrace at the ORTUS, you can see the room where I was a patient. My old Occupational Therapist Claire, came to the exhibition opening, with her husband – we had met 200 yards away when I was but a dribbling lopsided patient. I called it, Xavier White’s Full Circle (2014) as I left at 19 and was returning all these years later.
After seeing my ‘Cohedia guided tour’ on ‘youtube’, the curator of the Bethlem Gallery asked me to exhibit at the new Gallery space they were having built at the Bethlem Royal Hospital, in Kent. I achieved ‘Cohedia, wish you were here. Xx 2015’ , at the Bethlem Gallery as their first major solo show in this new gallery space. The Bethlem Hospital’s Museum Of the Mind’s curator (upstairs to the Bethlem Gallery) asked me if they could display ‘’Cohedia’ a large canvas in the museum for the Utopia 2016, celebrating the 500th anniversary of Thomas Moore’s book. That same year, the Museum was shortlisted for the Museum of the year award 2016, and I was again involved at the request of the curator to be involved in a photo shoot with the museum staff, by world famous portrait photographer, Rankin. We should have won! But we did get top billing on the Guardian webpage covering the award shortlist of museums.
April 2018, a neurosurgery nurse friend of mine, who works at Kings College Hospital informed me that Kings were naming a new ward after Charles Polkey, my consultant neurosurgeon who came to visit me back in 1985 in my room, and they wanted me to be there. With this invite I was inspired to make Polkey Ward a hand made glass piece, which is now displayed in the ward’s day room, where the nurses take their hand overs, and sit with it watching over them.
I made a cermaic Blue Plaque, at the Bethlem Hospitals ceramics workshop, so it is all in house. It’s taken me 4 years, 2 attempts, and two weeks to get it fitted. During those four years it stayed at King’s neurosciences dept for maybe a year, where it got cracked in to four tidy pieces, slices of ‘plaque cake’. I think it's hilarious. The crack spreads from the V of XAVIER and suits a head injury metaphor, continuing this modus operandi. I secured it to a board to make good for display. It was put in place on Friday 29th April, 2022, nearly 37 years to the day
A good friend Jo would visit me most days on her way home from work. Once I don’t know why but I told her to F… off thinking she wanted me to get on a trolly? I felt guilty for years about it. Jo went on to train as a nurse at Kings but sadly she died of a brain tumour in 2018. I dedicated my In Loving Memory triptych windows installation at Kings to her & the NHS carers.
About a week after regaining consciousness, it was my birthday, I couldn’t miss that! Still very quasi conscious I hosted visitors and opened cards from all over. The birthday cake was super creamy and I managed to get it all over my face, well it was my birthday! Someone must have taken the initiative & stuck the posters and cards up the walls for me to look at. I have them still as an archive of my time in recovery and recouperation.
I put my fascination with neurology and consciousness down to a moment in physiotherapy when the physiotherapist was asking me to take a step and I remember thinking how?, what messages to send? What should I imagine? The neurotransmission involved…
Occupational Therapy
Art Therapy Third Man theme tunes
At the end of my inpatient stay, staff nurse Jane Taylor helped me take down all my get well cards and put them all into a chocolate box, my take away. These cards and other items from my stay I complied into a scrape book, creative therapy. The scrap book has just been accepted in the Museum Of the Mind’s archives this year for which I am really grateful.
After all the care I had received I wanted to be a carer / nurse too in my post head injury set.
One day after therapy I sat next to Nurse Graham from the neurosurgical ward on the bus and we spoke about this as a career choice or artist. He said do what you are good at. I still wasn’t too sure.
About a week after regaining consciousness, it was my birthday, I couldn’t miss that! Still very quasi conscious I hosted visitors and opened cards from all over. The birthday cake was super creamy and I managed to get it all over my face, well it was my birthday! Someone must have taken the initiative & stuck the posters and cards up the walls for me to look at. I have them still as an archive of my time in recovery and recouperation.
I put my fascination with neurology and consciousness down to a moment in physiotherapy when the physiotherapist was asking me to take a step and I remember thinking how?, what messages to send? What should I imagine? The neurotransmission involved…
Occupational Therapy
Art Therapy Third Man theme tunes
At the end of my inpatient stay, staff nurse Jane Taylor helped me take down all my get well cards and put them all into a chocolate box, my take away. These cards and other items from my stay I complied into a scrape book, creative therapy. The scrap book has just been accepted in the Museum Of the Mind’s archives this year for which I am really grateful.
After all the care I had received I wanted to be a carer / nurse too in my post head injury set.
One day after therapy I sat next to Nurse Graham from the neurosurgical ward on the bus and we spoke about this as a career choice or artist. He said do what you are good at. I still wasn’t too sure.