Abandoned Goods (2014)

• 76%
• 2014
• Documentary
• Pia Borg
• Edward Lawrenson

Abandoned Goods is a short essay film that tells the story of the journey of the Adamson Collection. Recently rediscovered after years of neglect, the collection is one of the major bodies of British 'asylum art'. It contains around 5,500 objects (paintings, drawings, ceramics, sculptures and works on stone, flint and bone) created between 1946-1981 by patients in Netherne psychiatric hospital in Surrey. Blending archive, reconstruction, 35mm rostrum photography, interviews and observational footage, the film explores the transformation of the objects in the Adamson Collection, from clinical material to revered art objects, examining the lives of the creators and the changing contexts in which the objects were produced and displayed. The result is a moving impression of the unseen history of UK postwar asylum life.