Deep Inspiration gets under way
30 January 2007

An exciting new visual art exhibition and award for 2007 has been created by Asthma UK, with support from Gavin Turk and Damien Hirst.

Entitled Deep Inspiration, the exhibition is free and open to the public from 31 January - 6 February. It has also been backed by Leo Campbell, whose nine-year-old daughter, Polly died suddenly of asthma in 2003.

The exhibition aims to raise awareness of asthma through art produced by emerging contemporary artists, with a prize fund awarded, in Polly’s memory, to the artist whose work provides the most original insight into asthma.

See the works to be exhibited at Deep Inspiration

Here, Leo tells Asthma UK why art is the perfect medium to honour his daughter’s memory.


What inspired you to support the art exhibition?

I knew right from the start that doing something with art would be a fitting way to honour Polly’s legacy. She was a prolific artist – she would churn stuff out, often doing 15 variations of the same picture in the space of five minutes.

She loved creating and her enthusiasm was amazing. She loved contemporary art. She definitely understood it. I remember we went to the Tate Modern once and saw Cornelia Parker’s exploding shed. She blew up a shed and its contents, and recreated everything suspended in a room. It was fantastic. Polly was fascinated by it and by contemporary art in general. That’s one reason we wanted this exhibition to focus on emerging contemporary artists.

Shortly after Polly’s death I visited the offices of Asthma UK. On the wall in one of the meeting rooms was a picture a boy had drawn (I think he was nine years old - the same age as Polly) of what asthma meant to him. He’d wrapped himself in medical bandages, like a mummy, and put himself in a glass bottle with a cork in the top. For him that’s what his asthma was. It reduced me to tears when I saw it.

I realised then what an incredibly powerful medium art could be for portraying the suffering and pain that asthma can cause. But it’s not just about pain - there are some positive things that can be depicted through artistic expression as well.

Did you have any preconceived ideas about the works that would be put forward and, if so, have they matched up to what you’ve seen so far?

The artists’ response has exceeded anything that we could have hoped for or expected, in terms of the breadth and depth of the work.

We deliberately set an unusual brief, tighter than most artists would be used to. We very specifically set the task that the work must show some kind of insight and carry a message, and I think that’s been quite a challenge for the artists. Some have found it difficult, but others have absolutely thrown themselves at it and found that it’s taken them further than they expected.

Why do you think it’s important to keep people’s awareness of asthma as high as possible?

We all know that there is far too much complacency about asthma. Because it affects so many people in such different ways most people seem to think that it’s nothing to worry about.

Most people have no idea that it can take a life with no warning, and that there are people who live in fear that every time they have an asthma attack it could be their last. Until this is understood by a wider audience unnecessary deaths will continue to happen

If people come away from the exhibition feeling a bit shocked and disturbed at some of what they’ve seen I’ll regard that as a success. The truth of asthma is that it is shocking in many ways. We need to address the issue that nine out of ten deaths from asthma are preventable, which is both a positive and slightly harrowing statistic.

If this exhibition can help towards saving just one life then it would have been worth every ounce of effort that’s been put into it, and worthy of Polly’s name.