Sarah Kingham
‘Rose Lands’ is a sequence of images documenting the ruination of a complex of empty National Health Service buildings in the area of the artist’s home in the suburbs of London. These buildings were previously the site of mental health and drug and alcohol services, supporting vulnerable people. As many of these local services have been amalgamated, reduced and sometimes discontinued altogether, the buildings that formerly housed them can sit empty for years, subjected to the onslaughts of the weather and the encroachments of nature. As they are left neglected, the buildings and the land surrounding them are overtaken by weeds and even small trees that force their way through concrete of their car parks and grow from the fabric of the buildings themselves. Examining the encroachment of nature on a micro scale, ‘Rose Lands’ celebrates this riotous organic transformation even as it grieves the erosion of community support that the abandonment of these buildings represents.