CHRIS FREMANTLE

Lisa Pacini and Christine Istad,
Sun, 2012 – photo courtesy of Marres

Two interesting trajectories across the need for light particularly in winter.  The one is a blog from the Wellcome Trust on research being undertaken by their Research Fellow, Dr Tania Woloshyn, on the history of phototherapy, and the other is an exhibition at Marres House for Contemporary Culture in the Netherlands entitled Winter Anti Depression where they have created an Art Resort, a sensory environment in response to the winter.

The idea that the lack of sunlight affects those of us living in northern climates is not new, and research into the history of treatments highlights the complexity of the amount of sunlight that is healthy.

The exhibition demonstrates a number of art and design approaches to activating the senses.  Different works explore different senses from textured surfaces that you feel through your feet, to sounds to cocoon you in your bed, to light and colour.  The installation comprising a range of yellows is particularly evocative (see below).

Light and colour are increasingly significant in the design of healthcare contexts.  New technologies such as ‘Sky Ceilings’ and lightboxes can bring a feeling of daylight into rooms that lack windows.  The ‘temperature’ of light, especially with the increasing availability of LED bulbs, is enabling much more sophisticated design of environments.  But what is clear is that light and colour are not ‘universals’.  On the one hand their meaning is culturally informed, and as these examples highlight, also informed by seasonality.  We might want healthcare to be 24/7, but our bodies respond to seasonality just as they do to day and night.

Katja Gruijters
Saint John’s wort Lab, 2014, photography Jonas de Witte Courtesy of Marres