Sorika

One day early 2000s when I was photographing a housemate in the backyard of this housing coop I was living in out Ladbroke Grove way, she asked me why I was doing it. I said I had my reasons and that one day it would be in a museum… that day has arrived 

The museum is located in the grounds of Bethlem Royal Hospital, formerly known as Bedlam, the world’s oldest psychiatric hospital.

There used to be a detox unit on the grounds of the hospital called Wickham Park House. I spent the December of 1999 in there with my knees knocking together. 26 years later the circle is complete.

The work in the vitrine is cut up sections from a maquette for an unpublished book called ‘A Hypo Full of Love’. Here’s a paragraph from the text that my brother Chris Wilson wrote for it.

‘Well I know I can live off of what’s left on your plate at the restaurant, I know that I never have to drive a car to get where im going ,I know I can walk barefoot for life like my ancestors, I know I can lay down on the bank of the river and wake up when the sun is rising in the east, I know I can sit in a prison cell for years at a time with a blank book and a pencil and fill the pages with rich visions and conversations held with the spirits of wolves and dead children and then leave it on the floor of my cell when they open it to release me, leave it there with out having to show it to anyone else in order to validate myself threw their eyes, or to take it with me to hold on to in case I forget, because its all right here in my heart, all of it mother fucker.’ CW

On show until 20th June 2026