After receiving emergency NHS treatment at the beginning of 2020, LUAP begins giving artworks directly to frontline workers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Love Our NHS grows from a personal experience of care and a desire to return some of that support through art.
In January, shortly after returning from Indonesia, an insect bite picked up in the UK develops into a serious infection across LUAP’s right leg. Cellulitis follows, along with the risk of sepsis when the infection fails to respond to antibiotics. He spends eight days in hospital on intravenous treatment before doctors operate to remove the infected tissue.
Much of that time is spent on the Clinical Decision Unit in the middle of A&E. New patients arrive constantly, with Friday and Saturday nights particularly demanding, yet the staff continue caring for everyone around them while keeping LUAP calm throughout his own treatment.
Leaving hospital is only the beginning of the recovery. For the next eight weeks, LUAP returns every other day to have the wound packed so that it can heal from the inside out. Spending so much time around NHS staff gives him a direct view of the care and pressure involved long before Covid-19 places the service under an entirely different level of strain.
For LUAP, that experience makes the response to the pandemic personal. Having so recently relied on NHS staff himself, he wants to use what he can offer as an Artist to give something back. Rather than create a conventional exhibition or fundraiser, friends and colleagues nominate frontline workers and LUAP sends artworks directly to their homes, hoping to bring some relief after difficult shifts and make a small positive difference to their wellbeing.
The responses show what a relatively simple gesture can mean during an extraordinary period. Amy, a doctor in Glasgow, writes, “It arrived today, and it's great! The perfect escape. Thanks so much :-)” Jo, a nurse in Lancashire, adds, “Things that cheer us up make a big difference at the moment.”
Doctors and nurses in Glasgow, Lancashire and Newcastle receive works through Love Our NHS. The project sits within a wider strand of LUAP’s practice in which art can have a practical role beyond exhibitions and sales, particularly when a cause has a genuine personal connection.
Here, that connection could hardly be more immediate. Only months earlier LUAP had been the person receiving care. Love Our NHS turns gratitude into something tangible, passing a little of that care back through the thing he is able to give directly, his art.
Amy - Doctor - Glasgow
Jo - Nurse - Lancashire
Mark - Nurse - Lancashire
Nurse - Sophia - Newcastle
