Date:	Commencing 30 March for 9 months
Artist:	Karen Heald
Location:	Bodelwyddan, North Wales

The Ablett Unit is an acute inpatient psychiatric unit
for adults where Karen Heald will be in residency for
the next nine months.

Karen Heald’s artwork has evolved out of working both site-specifically and on residencies here in the UK and worldwide including residencies in Germany, Japan, Mongolia and a Sleep Research centre in Charleroi University Hospital, Belgium. Currently her practice is exploring various aspects of time, location and sleep. She has explored this work through a variety of media, primarily video, but also installation works, photography and hand made books. She has evolved her own poetic visual language that engages with the differences and similarities between painting and film, creating a language of “painterly video” that communicates difficult and personal issues with subtle, oblique visual stanzas. Currently in her research and personal practice she is engaging with the visual form of the triptych in both photography and video. Karen’s work has engaged with a variety of collaborations with diverse practitioners such as glass artist, Chris Bird-Jones, installation artist Elizia Volkmann in their K&E project, as well as non-arts professionals such as medical doctors, scientists, sociologists and other academics. Karen Heald is also a PhD student at Leeds Metropolitan University and visiting lecturer at Glyndwr University, Wrexham.

During the residency Karen Heald will work with both patients and staff at the hospital as well as pursuing her own research. She intends initially to run workshops in video, photography and painting for staff and inpatients within the unit. Karen has invited Dr Susan Liggett (Senior Lecturer at Glyndwr University, Wrexham), to take part and co-facilitate the painting workshops. As well as this Karen will ask interested patient and staff participants to keep written, audio and visual diaries to explore ideas of time, dreams and sleep. There will be both a therapeutic and collaborative elements in the production and editing of these diaries. The outcome of this work will be an exhibition to be held in early 2010 within the hospital.

This project has been made possible through funding from the North Wales NHS Trust and the Arts Council of Wales. The programme is curated by Safle.