Time Flies - A limited edition print by Sutapa Biswas is to be released at British Art Fair 2025 to raise funds for mental health charity, Hospital Rooms.

British Art Fair will see the release of Time Flies, a new series of three limited edition prints by celebrated Indian-born, British artist, Sutapa Biswas, to raise funds for the mental health charity, Hospital Rooms. This marks the first collaboration between British Art Fair and Hospital Rooms, and the works will be shown as part of the charity’s immersive installation at the Fair to be held 25-28 September in Saatchi Gallery, London.

Sutapa Biswas

Sutapa Biswas’ work has, for over forty years, investigated how overarching historical narratives from across the globe collide with often-undocumented personal stories. Her practice questions the complexities of racial and gendered power relations born out of tangled colonial histories – especially the implacable incursions on daily life resulting from the residual power structures borne out of these histories.

Her works have been exhibited internationally including at Tate, Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven), The British Museum (London), ‘Mixed Bathing World 2015’ Triennial (Beppu, Japan), ‘6th Havana Biennial’, Neuberger Museum (New York, USA), Art Gallery of Ontario (Canada), Iniva (London), Whitechapel Gallery (London), Nara Roesler gallery (São Paulo), Douglas Cooley Gallery (Reed College, USA), The Photographer’s Gallery (London). Her artworks are in public collections including Tate, UK Government Art Collection, Arts Council England, Reed Gallery (USA), Graves Gallery, Sheffield Museums and Galleries (UK), and Cartwright Hall, Bradford Museum and Art Gallery (UK).

Sutapa Biswas first collaborated with Hospital Rooms on a project at Garnet Ward (2017), a mental health unit for older people in North London, and Springfield Hospital in South West London (2022). She has also led two Digital Art School workshops, designed for people in inpatient mental health units across the country to take part in. 

Time Flies
The imagery for Time Flies draws inspiration from diverse literary and visual sources often found in the artist's studio. Deeply personal in nature this series reflects on memory, language, and the enduring presence of loved ones who have passed. Each print in the series centres on a different bird, offering delicate, fleeting markers of time that evoke both fragility and resilience. Biswas recalls her late father as “bird-like,” and through these works, she explores how conversations and words continue to accompany us across seasons and through grief, offering moments of continuity and care.

Biswas also considers Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, where the call of a wood pigeon punctuates the flow of memory, to the words of Allen Ginsberg and other poets. The birds act as both symbols and companions, carrying the emotional weight of remembrance and the cycles of life. Each print leaves breathing space on the page, inviting contemplation and connection.

Through Time Flies, Biswas weaves the personal with the universal, echoing Hospital Rooms’ mission to bring creativity, beauty, and care through art. 

Hospital Rooms
Hospital Rooms is an arts and mental health charity that commissions world-class artists to work with NHS service users and staff to radically transform inpatient mental health units. Their projects bring bold, thoughtful and co-produced art into locked and secure settings, reimagining clinical environments as spaces of colour, dignity and possibility. Since 2016, the charity has completed over 25 major projects and collaborated with artists including Sonia Boyce, Harold Offeh, Sutapa Biswas, and Mark Titchner. Their current national programme, supported by Arts Council England, spans 52 artworks and 150+ creative workshops across four NHS Trusts.

The editions of Time Flies will be available exclusively at British Art Fair from 25–28 September, with online sales opening from 26 September at hospital-rooms.com. Sutapa Biswas will also sign works in person on Thursday 25 September, 5.30-6.30pm.