In Practice
Royal College of Psychiatrists, London, 2025.
An exhibition of works distributed in fourteen locations across three floors of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, London. The works are tracings of texts taken from the College’s antiquarian library and archive. The project considers who psychiatrists are meant to be, what they are meant to value, and what they are meant to do. It also considers how some of these characteristics have remained remarkably consistent over time, while others have morphed in response to social and professional needs. Finally, it provides some insight into the evolution of professions and work more broadly in society, touching on our shared understanding of competence, responsibility, bureaucracy, regulation, workloads, hierarchy and teamwork.
The works are made of pencil and carbon transfer on paper, behind museum glass, in limed and graphite-coated oak frames. The exhibition also includes one work on paper from the early nineteenth century, which is framed in a similar manner. With the exception of this nineteenth-century work, each work also has an accompanying disclaimer to its right, which is a printed document in a limed oak frame. I made all the mounts and frames for the project.
A map and list of references, and a conversation with Dr Alan Baban, a writer, psychiatrist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist, both accompany the project.
The photographs below document work number 1 through to work number 14 on the map and list of references linked above.
1. ‘His duty is to be reasonably skilful’
Disclaimer shown next to every work (only shown once, here):
2. ‘A Self-Imposed Discipline and Responsibility Dictated by the Professional Conscience’
3. ‘No Brilliant Halo Can Ever Shine Round his Head’
4. ‘Responsibility Rests with Management’
5. ‘Any Medical Practitioner is Bound to Use Reasonable Skill and Care’
6. ‘Administrative Failures and Lack of Resources’
7. ‘The College is Impressed and Depressed’
8. Untitled theorem watercolour on paper by Phebe Pusey Phipps, probably c.1810–1820, Pennsylvania, USA. Framed and mounted by Adam Hines-Green in 2024.
9. ‘The Physical and Moral Qualities of the Man’
10. ‘His Duties are Peculiar’
11. ‘Within this Framework of Governed Professionalism’
12. ‘The Asylum is His World. The Patients Are His Friends’
13. ‘In an Asylum, as in a Mill’
14. ‘Delegation of Authority, but no Abrogration of Responsibility’
A display cabinet on the first floor showed some of the original books from the antiquarian library and documents from the archive used to make the works above:
Photographs by Alexander Edwards.