THE ART

Art, Space, and Systemic Wellbeing: The Role of Contemporary Art in Shaping Human-Centred Design

In today’s world of hyper-commercialised real estate, design often risks reducing space to a commodity: square footage, resale value, an “asset class” for capital. Art, too, is often flattened to auction prices and Instagram likes—a marker of status rather than substance.

Yet at its best, contemporary art remains one of the most powerful tools for rehumanising space, fostering systemic wellbeing, and cultivating authentic community.

This essay examines the modern art scene in the UK—especially Yorkshire—as both mirror and critique of our times, and explores how art can transform built environments not just for private pleasure or investment, but for collective, social, and ethical good.

Art as Systemic Wellbeing in Design

Systemic wellbeing, as understood in design philosophy, rejects the idea of wellness as merely personal or aesthetic. It considers the interconnected health of people, communities, and the environments they inhabit.

Art is essential here: it doesn’t just decorate a room; it sets the conditions for thought, conversation, and social relation.

As an interior architect, I’ve seen this firsthand in Room for Lies at The Bay Club Mumbai. This space wasn’t designed for passive consumption but for active engagement. The art curation was immersive, confronting, and playful—a provocation that invited guests to question their own narratives and interact with others. It created social friction as a catalyst for genuine human connection.

This is the true power of art in space-making: it can hold ambiguity, invite dialogue, and produce meaning beyond function or luxury.

The UK Modern Art Scene: A Mirror of Our Times

The contemporary art world in the UK today is marked by a fascinating tension: on one hand, a deep entanglement with the global market; on the other, a sincere drive for ethical critique and social engagement.

Frieze Art Fair showcases this perfectly—a space where multi-million-pound figurative paintings designed for Instagram walls sit beside politically charged installations about migration or climate. As I’ve observed:

“Frieze shows the UK is still a critical global art hub—but increasingly defined by global market forces rather than a distinctive national avant-garde.”

Meanwhile, the Venice Biennale reveals how Britain wants to see itself internationally: thoughtful, postcolonial, ethically aware. John Akomfrah’s 2024 British Pavilion, with its layered narratives of migration and empire, is a perfect example. It’s art as social conscience—designed not just to be seen, but to be grappled with.

Hauser & Wirth in Somerset is another case study: an exquisitely curated gallery set in rolling countryside, it’s a destination where art merges with hospitality and lifestyle. But it raises questions: is art here for critical reflection, or for the aesthetic consumption of a privileged audience?

This tension isn’t necessarily a flaw. It highlights art’s double role: status symbol and site of critical meaning.

Regional Power: Yorkshire’s Artistic Ecology

While London dominates the UK art market, regions like Yorkshire offer a vital counterpoint: a more grounded, socially engaged, and sometimes more humorous practice.

Yorkshire’s artists are deeply invested in place, memory, and class, often using wit and popular appeal to unsettle polite assumptions.

Consider Harland Miller (York-born), whose faux Penguin book covers satirise British literary snobbery. His work is collectible but also bitingly funny—a critique that buyers literally hang on their walls.

Or Mandy Payne, Sheffield-based, whose paintings of decaying Brutalist estates don’t romanticise urban decline but insist we see the social histories written in concrete.

Then there’s Bedwyr Williams, whose absurd performances and texts skewer art-world pretension itself—turning laughter into critique.

These practices show that art in Yorkshire isn’t just for investment or institutional prestige; it’s for confronting local histories and forging community conversation.

Off-Beat and Up-and-Coming: A New Generation of Meaning-Makers

Beyond the market darlings, there is a rich seam of UK artists deliberately choosing to be off-beat, messy, and socially committed:

⭐ Lindsey Mendick uses grotesque ceramics and horror-folk aesthetics to expose domestic anxieties and gender politics. Her work is funny, confrontational, and deeply human.

⭐ Jesse Darling, Turner Prize winner, assembles broken, DIY materials to critique borders, ableism, and late capitalism—an aesthetic of care for the excluded.

⭐ Simeon Barclay, Yorkshire-based, interrogates Black masculinity and class through installation, video, and sculpture. His work isn’t “comfortable” decor—it demands conversation about identity and place.

These artists embody systemic wellbeing by refusing art-as-luxury-commodity and instead making art as social practice.

The Role of Art in Spaces

In interior design, art must never be an afterthought—a bauble for the wealthy, or a “finishing touch” to satisfy Instagram’s taste.

Art makes a space: it can define its mood, ethics, and human potential.

When a hotel lobby features Cornelia Parker’s exploded shed or Heather Phillipson’s anarchic multimedia installations, it invites visitors to sit with uncertainty, to question their surroundings.

When a neighbourhood commissions Patrick Murphy’s colourful dog sculptures or Lothar Goetz’s geometric murals, it isn’t just public art—it’s an invitation for the community to reclaim space, to gather, to talk.

Such interventions transform architecture from a container into a site of living cultural practice.

Art and Community: Building Social Infrastructure

At its best, art around buildings does more than impress—it creates shared language.

Public sculptures, murals, community art projects, and immersive installations all seed opportunities for encounter. They become landmarks in the social fabric, encouraging people to pause, reflect, discuss.

Yorkshire excels here: think of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where monumental works by Antony Gormley, Ai Weiwei, or local heroes like Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth aren’t fenced off from the world but set in landscapes people stroll through. It’s a space where art is lived with.

Similarly, local initiatives—murals in Hull, ceramics workshops in Sheffield—aren’t just about “beautification.” They’re tools for social repair and community voice.

Art as Ethical Design

Designers and architects have a responsibility: to reject purely instrumental views of space as commodity and instead see space as an ethical proposition.

Including art in design is not about “adding value” in the estate-agent sense. It is about cultivating value in the human sense: criticality, beauty, ambiguity, empathy, memory, humour.

As David Hockney once said of his luminous, joy-filled paintings:

“Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus.”

Art moves us. It moves space beyond function, beyond luxury, beyond Instagrammable surfaces, into something profoundly human.

Conclusion

Today’s UK art scene, for all its market entanglements and status anxieties, still offers remarkable evidence of art’s power to remake space—and society—for the better.

From the politically charged installations of John Akomfrah to the deadpan wit of Harland Miller, from Sheffield’s urban realism to Lindsey Mendick’s subversive ceramics, art offers us tools to question, to feel, to remember, to belong.

As designers and architects, we should see art not as ornament but as foundation.

It is not the final flourish on a space.

It is the making of space itself.