Breathe:2022 at the Bloomsbury Festival

In 2012 Dryden Goodwin created Breathe, an animation of 1,300 drawings of his 5 year old son inhaling and exhaling, which was projected on the roof of St Thomas’ Hospital opposite the Houses of Parliament. Ten years later, Goodwin has revisited the subject, for Breathe:2022.

From the 14th – 23rd October 2022 Bloomsbury Festival shows 72 images enlarged as posters along the Euston Road , one of the most polluted roads in the country. These form zoetropic sequences of clean air campaigners and London residents ‘fighting for breath‘. This outdoor exhibition links with wider public displays of the artwork across Lewisham, on buildings, under bridges and next to the South Circular as a flagship commission for Lewisham London Borough of Culture 2022.

Breathe:2022 will culminate in Lewisham in November, as a large outdoor video projection, animating over 1,000 drawings. This multi-site, multi-faceted work has been seen by many millions to date, and asks us to both stay with the claustrophobia of ‘fighting for breath’ but begin to look upwards and outwards, towards the possibilities of community action and a clean air future for all. Connecting this global health emergency to the daily lives of London residents.

Originally produced by Invisible Dust and commissioned by the Albany for We Are Lewisham. We Are Lewisham is presented by Lewisham Council and the Albany as part of the Mayor’s London Borough of Culture 2022.

Breathe:2022 at the Bloomsbury Festival is supported by the SHM Foundation.

Find out more #Breathe2022.