Have Strength Find Peace

Wall painted text and framed screen-prints (incorporating carbonated vegetation) Carl Rowe 2018 Commissioned by Hospital Rooms charity The combined-media installation Have Strength Find Peace is an artwork commissioned by Hospital Rooms for the Tribunal Room at Woodlands mental health unit, Ipswich Hospital. The text used in the piece is derived from a workshop that Carl Rowe undertook with patients at Woodlands. In the screen-prints, the words ‘Strength’ and ‘Peace’ have been superimposed over photographs of majestic trees that grow in Christchurch Park, Ipswich. The intention of bringing nature inside the confines of the room has been surreptitiously reinforced by virtue of the fact that the black ink used in the screen-printing process is derived from carbonated acorns, sweet chestnuts and horse chestnuts gathered from Christchurch Park. The concept of harnessing physical material (dust) to become a pictorial representation of itself is common to Rowe’s practice and underpins a transformative and somewhat mystical process.