Wellcome Collection and Attenborough Arts Centre are pleased to present Jason and the Adventure of 254, a major solo exhibition by leading artist Jason Wilsher-Mills. Showcasing his largest and most personal commission to date, this free exhibition is a joyful and subversive exploration of the body, drawing on the artist’s experience of becoming disabled as a child.
Reimagining the gallery space as a hospital ward, Wilsher-Mills’ immersive installation of sculptures, illustrations and interactive dioramas challenges the cultural and societal perceptions surrounding disability, medicine and the human body. Through a kaleidoscope of colours and a touch of magic realism, the exhibition is also a celebration of family, his working-class background and the opportunities he received through hospital education, inviting audiences to explore childhood memories and creativity through the artist’s trademark humour.
Jason and the Adventure of 254 delves into the transformative moment of Wilsher-Mills’ diagnosis of an autoimmune condition, triggered by contracting chickenpox at the age of eleven. Paralysed from the neck down until the age of sixteen, and unable to physically explore the wider world around him, the artist came to inhabit an interior world filled with action heroes, TV shows, films, comics, books and his own vivid imagination. The exhibition’s title alludes to 2.54pm at Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield, on 1 August 1980 when he witnessed his parents being told of his diagnosis at the end of his hospital bed. He can pinpoint this exact moment in time as it coincided with British athlete Sebastian Coe winning the gold medal in the 1500m race at the 1980 Summer Olympics, which was being shown on the ward’s TV at the same time.
In the exhibition, visitors are invited to step into the physical manifestation of this memory, encountering a mesmerising dreamscape where a monumental figure lies in a hospital bed watching TV, surrounded by oversized plastic toy soldiers delivering the virus, inflatable germs that hang in the air and a 30-metre illustrative wallpaper depicting significant episodes from the artist’s life.
The exhibition also features a series of nine lightbox dioramas which distil Wilsher-Mills’ childhood memories of this time, both before and after his diagnosis. Throughout the space, visitors are welcome to activate different scenes inspired by his working-class background and his experience as a young person. In Mum as Mermaid (2024) the artist recalls a family holiday to the seaside where he imagined his mother as a mermaid surrounded by bioluminescent jellyfish, whilst Hippo Scare (2024) depicts a childhood encounter with a hippopotamus at a zoo in Manchester, which Wilsher-Mills credits with the beginning of his creative awakening as an artist.
The installation is supplemented by sketchbooks of pen and ink drawings – a practice Wilsher-Mills has returned to for the first time in 30 years – which have been reconfigured in layers using an iPad. They are inspired by encounters with anatomical studies in Wellcome’s historic collections, which evoke memories of the artist’s own hospitalisation. After the exhibition closes, the sketchbooks will be acquired into Wellcome Collection.
Jason Wilsher-Mills is a disabled artist born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, now living in Sleaford, Lincolnshire. The son of a coal miner, he is the youngest of eight children and grew up on council estates in Wakefield. He was the first in his family to go to university and studied painting at the Cardiff School of Art and Design.
He has exhibited and been commissioned by The Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar and the Houses of Parliament, among other international venues. He is the winner of the 2020 Adam Reynolds Award and was awarded second place, for visual & performing arts, on the Shaw Trust Disability power list for 2023-2024.
‘Jason and the Adventure of 254’ is curated by Shamita Sharmacharja, Wellcome Collection Curator, and commissioned by Wellcome Collection.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Join Attenborough Arts Centre to celebrate the launch of Jason and the Adventure of 254 on Thursday 4 June 2026, 5pm – 7pm, with introductions from Jason Wilsher-Mills; Darren Henley CBE, Chief Executive, Arts Council England; and Andrew Fletcher, Director of Attenborough Arts Centre. Free for all to attend with drinks available. To book your place, visit the centre’s website by clicking here.
Join us for the return of Attenborough Late, a fun-packed after-hours art experience the takes over our whole building. Our gallery and café will be buzzing with music, dance, performances and craft workshops all for no fee, with an array of food and drinks available for purchase. Friday 19 June 2026, 6pm – 10pm, Pay What You Can tickets, click here to learn more and book your place.