Healing: Art & Therapy
20 Aug to 9 Nov 2025
Artists: Fayen d’Evie, Carol Dobson, Jenny Hickinbotham, Alecia Neo, Finnegan Shannon and Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, and Grace Wood with more to be announced
Curated by Amelia Wallin and Jacina Leong
Healing: art & therapy (working title) is a group exhibition of contemporary and historic artworks that takes as its starting point institutional experiences of care. It draws from the Larundel Collection, and the unique Art Access Studio program led by artists at the former Larundel Mental Hospital (1953-1991), on what is now the grounds of La Trobe University (Bundoora Campus). Art Access Studio pioneered and challenged the ways in which art could be used therapeutically, shifting away from the artwork as a diagnostic tool towards art-making as an opportunity for self-directed healing.
Alongside select works from the Larundel Collection, exhibited with the permission of the makers, the exhibition includes newly commissioned and existing works by contemporary artists engaging critically with the ethics of institutional care, specifically within the hospital and the museum. This includes works by artists whose practices draw from their lived experiences to:
- consider the therapeutic and healing possibilities for artmaking
- challenge structural aspects of institutional access, participation and marginalisation
- complicate boundaries of care work, care receiving, and caregiving
With this exhibition we ask: what does care contribute to art-making? And in turn, how does art-making contribute to healing?
Image: Finnegan Shannon and Sam Peterson, Do you want us here or not, 2023. Courtesy of the artists.