Lauren Brincat's exhibition, When Do I Breathe, at The Lock-Up in Newcastle asks us to talk about care

Australia Broadcast Center

04-05-2025

When artist Lauren Brincat sat down with the head of nursing at Sydney's Royal Women's Hospital, she didn't mean to stump her with a simple but pointed question: "Who cares for you?"
Brincat was struck by her reply: "No-one's ever really asked me that before."
The multidisciplinary artist was at the hospital as part of a year-long project aimed at getting to know the different communities who live, work and study in this busy corner of Randwick in Sydney's eastern suburbs.
Her aim? To use art to explore and respond to the ways we value care and wellbeing in our communities.
The community was invited to come together through art and public performance.
(
Supplied: Zan Wimberley
)
The art of care
Brincat was commissioned by Sophie Forbat, head of arts and placemaking for the Randwick Health & Innovation Precinct, a sprawling site that also encompasses the University of New South Wales, the Royal Children's and Prince of Wales hospitals and a swathe of new buildings that will be dedicated to health research as part of a $1.5 billion redevelopment of the area.
Forbat and her team are responsible for thinking about how social infrastructure can help make connections across the site between medicine, health and community. But it's more than just public art.
"These [artist-led] projects are seeking to create a deeper understanding of place and they have a focus on co-design and collaboration with the community, as well as the physical space," Forbat explains.
Brincat's aim wasn't to impose an idea, but formulate one in collaboration with the community.
(
Supplied: Zan Wimberley
)
Another focus for the project came courtesy of funding from Transport for NSW's Safer Cities Initiative. It's a global program that considers the importance of gender-inclusive design when it comes to women and public spaces.
Given that 80 per cent of the Royal Women's Hospital's workforce is female, it's not surprising that safety and wellbeing came up a lot in the many conversations Brincat had with nurses and other community members across the precinct.
At first, Brincat wasn't sure where these conversations would take her.
"With most of my projects, I often don't know what's going to emerge, but I've been doing this for long enough now that there's a trust that something will happen," she says.
Code Lavender
One of the things Brincat was surprised to learn about was the existence of a hospital "code lavender", an emergency response designed to offer immediate emotional support to staff in a hospital when a traumatic event occurs.
It's a protocol with a focus on care — and on providing space to gather, debrief and reflect.
Code Red is well known, but hospital staff also have a "Code Lavender".
(
Supplied: Zan Wimberley
)
Brincat was less surprised to learn that a lot of nurses were still feeling very burnt out from their work during the height of the pandemic and some of the changes it forced.
"I was just hearing this collective sadness that a lot of the tea rooms had been taken away. So there was no place or refuge for the healthcare workers to go during their shift to debrief."
Still in the early stages of listening and gathering stories, Brincat devised the 24hr Tea Break — a round-the-clock cafe and drop-in space on the lawn outside the hospital.
"I needed to almost prove to the community that I was serious about making work with them and that I was actually there for them and not just trying to make a work for my own sake," she says.
There was barista-made coffee and midnight spanakopita for the staff.
"And it just took off. People were so happy," Brincat says.
"There was a uterus transplant that was happening for the first time [that night]; there was a cleaner who was working her last shift after 20 years at the hospital. I just heard the most amazing stories and that all played into the [art] work."
Health workers told Brincat they were still reeling from the impacts of working through the early years of the COVID pandemic.
(
Supplied: Zan Wimberley
)
When do I breathe?
Many of the nurses Brincat met were also part of the UNSW Collegium Musicum Choir, led by Sonia Maddock. Brincat, who'd never been part of a choir before, started attending the bi-weekly rehearsals.
"Often, a singer would put up their hand and ask when they should breathe. As in, when should they take a breath. I'd never heard that question but just thought, 'Gosh that's beautiful.'
"When do I breathe? When do you breathe? When are we breathing? I feel like there's a lot of holding our breath at the moment," she says.
This idea of taking a breath — of finding a moment (and a place) to breathe or exhale — connected to the other ideas of safety and wellbeing that Brincat was exploring after her conversations at the hospital.
Driven by the idea of using performance to "stitch together" the different built environments and communities across the precinct, the concept of a communal procession began to take shape; a way to safely and joyfully reclaim public spaces together with members of the public.
Lauren Brincat worked at the Women's Hospital and other health services at Sydney's Randwick precinct in 2023 to draw the community into art-making.
(
Supplied: Zan Wimberley
)
Working with Maddock, composer Evelyn Ida Morris and choreographer Charmene Yap, Brincat invited the choristers, which included hospital researchers, NIDA students and former Sydney Dance Company members, to help shape the performance.
"I really felt that everyone put their own self into it. In the end, it didn't really feel like my project at all, it was all of our project."
Women's safety made front and centre
Rehearsals for the performance were only in their second or third week when the Bondi Junction Westfield attack — which killed five women and a security guard — happened.
"It was so upsetting but it also struck me that I was here making a work for women in Randwick about what it means to feel safe in society and they [can't even] feel safe in [nearby] Bondi."
The horror of that attack galvanised Brincat and the performers.
"
It made us gather and it made the work feel more important. We had over 300 people walk with us on the night, which was amazing.
"
The procession, which started on the UNSW campus, followed a former emergency-vehicle route through the hospital precinct, past an ugly multi-storey car park and across several roads before ending up at the Catherine Hayes Building on the grounds of the Prince of Wales Hospital.
It began at dusk. "That's the time when most healthcare workers leave or start shifts and we wanted to understand what that felt like," Brincat explains.
Performers wore handwoven hats and carried large, silk geometric flags that Brincat calls "graphic scores"; abstract representations of the stories she had gathered.
Performers in the procession wore handwoven hats.
(
Supplied: Zan Wimberley
)
Wrapped in gauze
Connecting everyone in the procession was a 100-metre piece of handwoven gauze fabric that the performers carried and that members of the public were invited to hold onto as the procession moved.
"I knew I wanted a big piece of cloth to carry us together, that everyone could touch and move through. I just responded to everything that I'd been seeing: protests, processions, people gathering.
"But I wanted it to be an open conversation and not about one community or another. I wanted it to feel safe and everyone [to be able to] come together and feel they belonged."
Photo shows
From far back a group of people is seen walking across a ridge in dense, lush green bush.
In the lush NSW South Coast bush, Bundanon Art Museum is showcasing the results of a question posed to artists: what can we learn from our environment?
Fabric has been a recurring material in Brincat's practice. At Carriageworks and on the Sydney Opera House forecourt she's animated large-scale, billowing sails of fabric with accompanying choreographed dance and sound components.
But for this project, Brincat felt compelled to work with gauze. "Historically, it felt like the right material to use," she says.
Like the gauze, using the Catherine Hayes building as a culminating point for the procession also felt right — despite the fact it had been closed and out of use for 60 years. "But I think that's what artists do. We just push through something that's been there or been that way forever; that no-one's seen. They've been walking past this beautiful space that's been empty for decades."
Finding out who Hayes was made it feel destined. "I learned that she was an Irish opera singer and that a concert she held helped pay for the hospital to be built [in 1870]."
Off the streets and into the gallery
One year on from the procession, the material from the project — the flags, gauze, hats and a film — are now on display at contemporary art space The Lock-Up, a former 1800s police station in Newcastle.
Inside The Lock-Up exhibition; Brincat is pleased the work has now become part of Newcastle's story, too.
(
Supplied: Ben Adams
)
Wandering through the foyer, Brincat's large silk flags flutter in the breeze, and moving through them feels like gently navigating a dazed but happy crowd.
Elsewhere in the largest of the former police cells, the 100 metres of gauze takes on a draped sculptural form while a film showing the procession plays. Flags rest against the walls, like off-duty sentries and, in another room, the hats are suspended in a display of ropes and shadows.
The exhibition, as with the original project, combines movement, song and fabric sculptures.
(
Supplied: Ben Adams
)
Each of the flags is named after a woman who participated in the work while the hats are named in memory of the Bondi Junction victims. "I wasn't sure about that, to be honest, but I didn't want to pretend that they weren't part of it."
The exhibition, also titled When do I breathe? was not an outcome Brincat had initially given much thought to.
"It's about the process, honestly, but I'm just pleased that [these objects] get a life beyond just those couple of hours of the performance. I'm so happy that people can see the work again. And now Newcastle is embedded into those stories too, which I love."
While Brincat feels she only just scraped the surface of what the work could be in Randwick, she's hopeful of its legacy.
"I just heard through the grapevine that they're now keeping [the Catherine Hayes building] open and turning it into a tearoom for the nurses."
When Do I Breathe is at The Lock-Up in Newcastle until May 25.