Helen Pheby interviews artist Jason Wilsher-Mills about Jason and the Adventure of 254
Helen Pheby: Congratulations on an incredible exhibition at the Wellcome Collection Jason. Jason and the Adventure of 254 isn’t quite what I imagined. I knew it would be really powerful, and immaculately made, but it is not like anything else I’ve experienced.
Jason Wilsher-Mills: Thank you. I am really proud of it. The opening was incredible. I only managed to move about 15 yards the whole night. There were hundreds of people there. People were crying, Anthony, my friend from Corby, with learning disabilities had his arms around me whispering how much he loved me. Well, shouting really. It was bonkers. absolutely bonkers.
HP: It deservedly had a really positive reaction and from the Wellcome Collection too.
JWM: I tell you something. When you’re in a room of your own work, and everyone loves it, and loves you, it’s the best painkiller in the world. I have three major operations coming up, but I’m always determined to enjoy life. The opening was a real Billy Elliot moment for me, to have a major exhibition in a national institution.
HP: And front pages in the Financial Times and The Guardian!
JWM: Yeah, It's bonkers, absolutely bonkers. People have been telling me to slow down, but if I do I’ll stop. And working does actually make me feel better. I love it. The ideas are coming thick and fast and so are the opportunities. So why wouldn’t I? As I said in my speech, I’ve still got the Wild Man of Borneo and the Ghost of Broadowler Lane to do. All these stories. It's got to be dark and light.
HP: I think that was the main thing for me about experiencing the Wellcome Collection exhibition. The joy of it, and the affirming nature of it. Yes it’s unflinching in talking about your lived experience, the pain, the fact you heard your parents being told you wouldn’t live past 16 years old. But it’s still an incredibly positive project. It also seems to be a culmination of the last few years for you Jason?
JWM: Well, it all started with Yorkshire Sculpture Park and built from there. Meeting Clare as part of the Sky Arts Landmark public sculpture TV programme. Then the YSP exhibition with Sarah and the Wakefield Council Sculpture Trail permanent commission. Once you have Yorkshire Sculpture Park on your CV it opens up lots of other opportunities and recognition. I got the Adam Reynolds Award from SHAPE Arts. I did a residency in Japan. I then had a touring show and one of the Wellcome Team saw it, because she’s from Doncaster and was back in the area, and that led to this exhibition. It’s like being in a band playing in a pub and being discovered. I’ve always been fascinated by the Wellcome collections, they’re like nothing else. They really spoke to my experience too, like prosthetics that I’ve worn. It’s a real treasure trove and since accepting the invitation it’s been an amazing experience, I have been very well cared for. For example, they knew that sharing this really significant part of my life would be triggering for me. The exhibition charts what happened to me after I was paralysed from the neck down due to an auto-immune condition affected by having chickenpox when I was 11 years old. I spent several years mostly on my back in Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield, where I come from. It’s called the Adventure of 254 because I was with my parents when they were told about my condition, at 2.54pm on 1 August 1980, and that I wouldn’t live past the age of 16. I remember it vividly because I heard what was being said, but was also watching Sebastian Coe winning the 1,500m race at the Olympics – coincidentally wearing the number 254. In many ways that time was an out of body experience. Colleagues at the Wellcome Collection appreciated that exploring this history would be a lot for me and paid for a counsellor to support me on this journey.
HP: The exhibition does give incredible insight into those experiences and the physical and emotional pain that you had to live through. But your strength and resilience comes across really strongly.
JWM: It was transformative. I do sometimes wonder what would have happened to me if I hadn’t become ill. I think it led to opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise. The trajectory for someone from my background tended to be school, then a factory and/or prison. If you were really lucky, being signed to play Rugby League. Before my illness I thought that’s what I wanted to be, a rugby player. I was a huge kid, scouts were watching me. I was a pain in the ass as a kid, I had loads of energy, I was bright, I was often in trouble. Like the time I wrote a story about a giant hamster. I was really pleased with it, but the school threatened me with the cane because they thought I wasn’t taking my education seriously. I did always want to be an artist though, I’ve always had a very rich imagination. My mum was supportive but the avenues didn’t really exist for someone like me to become an artist. School was a violent place and they didn’t really know how to nurture my artistic talent. Home wasn’t a naturally creative place, but we did tell each other stories. It wasn’t a typical place either, for years we lived with a mediaeval well in the front room – you know the posh room that is hardly ever used – a well was discovered in it and we basically had to live with it in our house. This big hole in the floor. That kind of thing really sparked my imagination. I did grow up knowing I was loved and surrounded by family, like my Auntie Mary and Auntie Joan who lived nearby. It was financially poor. I shared a bed with my sisters until I was six years old, and we used Army & Navy coats as covers, but it was rich in other ways. My mum was amazing really, she made me a natural activist. When I said I wanted to be an artist she said ‘oh well, I’ll save up and send you to Paris’. She definitely understood my art, what I was trying to do and say. When I was well enough, I studied art at Wakefield College. The friends I made there were incredibly supportive, but looking back now I had PTSD after what had happened to me. I hadn’t lived in my body for formative years and it freaked me out, the touch of things, like a cup, freaked me out. My friends were amazing.
HP: Well you’d had an extraordinary experience, many extraordinary experiences.
JWM: Yes. Nobody sat me down or gave me counselling at the time. It was the 1980s, that just didn’t happen. Going to school at the hospital, it was usual for your school friends to just not be there one day, because they’d died. My teenage years were extremely odd. There are three stages to my life really, my childhood which was eccentric and wonderful, everything was an adventure. Then my teenage years, which were traumatic but I was introduced to education, books and art. And then there’s the rest, becoming an artist. But everything since becoming ill has been affected by that, for example not going through puberty until my late 20s, it was really delayed. Now I’m 54 but I think in real years I’m in my 30s. It’s given me a certain way of looking at the world.
HP: The exhibition does feel momentous in lots of ways. It’s a really powerful installation, and yours is a unique and essential voice. But it does just feel like the beginning.
JWM: Yes, it does just feel like the tip of the iceberg.
HP: And it does feel very much like a form of storytelling.
JWM: Absolutely. That’s why I wanted the audio description to be in the third person, like Craig Cash in Gogglebox. And the storytelling is my life story, but it’s also the story of an artist. The figure in the bed is me, but it’s also a medical model. The dioramas are social models. It’s about how you feel as a working-class kid when you know you’re an artist, but you’re not sure what that means. It wasn't until I read a book about creativity and an interview with Paul McCartney who described knowing a song will be good because he feels it in his belly. I knew exactly how that feels, that point in the creative process when you’re onto something.
HP: It’s an incredibly affirming testament to you Jason, and to creativity. I’m so excited to see what you do next, including your project with SHAPE Arts in Venice this summer.
JWM: I feel that the figure in the bed becomes the artist he’s meant to be. I think me being in that bed gave me a set of tools to fulfil my creative potential. I’ve always seen the world like an artist, the light on people’s faces for example, and it could be a bit overwhelming. But being in that bed I was able to learn how to control it, because I just had my head really. I filled lots of sketchbooks. I've always been intrigued by the idea that I didn't get chicken pox at 11 and I went on to do whatever. What's the other version of me doing? Because I would be taller, I reckon I would have been about six foot two. So a very different kind of person. It's sort of fascinating, but I think I got the best deal. I really do.
Jason Wisher-Mills at Wellcome Collection, London, 2024, photo credit: @jamiebubb