Embargo: 11:00am - 21 November 2000

Art attack or heart attack? Cutting-edge artists exhibit powerful works onquitting smoking

Canmodern art help smokers quit?  Anexciting new approach to persuading smokers to kick the habit is to beinglaunched today at London's Whitechapel Art Gallery.  The World Health Organization (Europe) has commissioned twentyartists to create works of art on the theme of stopping smoking.  The work will be unveiled for the first timeat the Whitechapel and will then be exhibited in a number of galleries in otherEuropean cities.  The art is beingreproduced on posters to be distributed in doctors' surgeries and pharmaciesaround the country. 

CliveBates, Director of ASH, said:

“It's an inspired union of modern culture andhealth campaigning, and a credit to the World Health Organisation for taking onsuch an imaginative venture.  The arttaps into an understanding of smoking at a deeper and more intuitive level thanthe usual anti-smoking campaign advertising. The unsettling and anxious relationship that many people have withtobacco comes through very strongly in the work, and, as in real life smoking,a thin veil of ironic frivolity guards the serious and disturbing emotionswithin.”

Tocoincide with the “ArtWORKS” campaign, new guidelines on smoking cessation forhealth professionals will be launched. The idea is to inspire interest in quitting and to ensure that doctorsand health professionals are ready to respond. The guidelines, produced by the Health Development Agency, will bepublished in the journal Thorax and are now available on the ASH web site.

Dr.Ann McNeill, one of the authors of the guidelines, commented: 

“The art is powerful and exciting, but we also haveto make it count by taking the works out of the gallery and into places wherepeople will see them and respond.  Withseveral thousands posters going to doctors' surgeries and pharmacies, this is abold new approach to communicating with smokers.  Our new guidance is there to ensure the health community is readyto respond.

We know that helping people to quit smoking is justabout the most cost effective use of NHS resources, but we need to win over thedoctors and get them actively involved. The new guidelines show what everydoctor, nurse, pharmacist or other health professional needs to know if theyare going to play their part in preventing the cancer, heart disease andmultiple miseries caused by addiction to tobacco and nicotine.”

Notes: for links see this pressrelease at http://www.ash.org.uk/?press

·        ArtWORKSwill be open to the public at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, 80-82 WhitechapelHigh Street, London, E1 from 22-24 November [see map]

·        Seeexamples of the art at the WHO Europe web site

·        Viewsmoking cessation guidelines at: ASH smoking cessation siteor download PDF

Contacts:

·        CliveBates, Amanda Sandford (ASH): 020 7739 5902 (office) 077 6879 1237 (mobile -CB)

·        Forfurther information on the ArtWORKS campaign contact Amanda Barnes or JaniceMuir on +44 (0) 20 7407 3313 at the Janice Muir partnership