I’m delighted to share that my project Alongside Matron Bell is currently on show at SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin as part of Labo*r an Invitation to Action… a Basis for Hope. It opened on 05.07.24 and closes 24.08.2024.
‘Alongside Matron Bell’
2020, Photography, variable dimensions
Alongside Matron Bell is a series of 17 images produced in 2020, following a commission by the Lewisham Hospital in 2008 to mark the 60th anniversary of the National Health System (NHS). For the occasion, Joy Gregory chose to look at the entwined history between the NHS and the Windrush Generation, who had arrived in England from different Caribbean islands just a few weeks before the NHS was initiated. Using the story of Majorie Bell MBE, the first matron at the Lewisham Hospital under the NHS, Joy Gregory sheds light on the multiple stories of the women whose labour sustained the newly formed NHS, and who are the only reason why it survived beyond its inception. The work which was produced in 2020, a year marked by the COVID pandemic, was a timely one to pay tribute to all the nurses and the medical field who were at the frontline fighting the virus.