The Adventures of Jason Wilsher-Mills by Shamita Sharmacharja

British artist Jason Wilsher-Mills’ larger-than-life figurative sculptures and digital artworks are infused with colourful magic realism and tongue-in-cheek humour. Much of his work is informed by his experience of becoming disabled as a child. It reflects the social model of disability – the idea that it is society itself that is disabling by not accommodating for the full range of human needs. This is opposed to the medical model, which frames disability as a bodily lack, or dysfunction, or the charitable model, which depicts disabled people as helpless or as objects of pity – narratives of health that Wilsher-Mills seeks to disrupt.

Wilsher-Mills explores notions of agency, identity and pride in his work, taking his cue from the hero from Ancient Greek mythology after whom he was named. In his series ‘Jason and His Argonauts’ (2016–ongoing) he invests disability with ideas of victory and quest, interweaving his own biography and those of people from the community and youth groups that he works with, who he calls his fellow ‘argonauts’.

Born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, in 1969, the youngest of eight children, Wilsher-Mills contracted chickenpox at the age of 11. This triggered an autoimmune condition, which resulted in his paralysis from the neck down until the age of 16. In hospital he learnt to paint using his mouth and was exposed to artistic movements such as post-Impressionism, and the work of authors including George Orwell and Charles Dickens. Wilsher-Mills went on to study Fine Art at the Cardiff School of Art & Design, where he became aware of artists like Philip Guston and Georg Baselitz, who remain major influences on his work today.

Wilsher-Mills’ newest work, ‘Jason and the Adventure of 254’ (2024), is an immersive installation populated by monumental visual manifestations of his childhood memories. On entering the gallery, visitors are transported back in time to Pinderfields Hospital at 2.54pm on 1 August 1980. Eleven-year-old Jason has just witnessed his parents receiving the prognosis that their son would not live to reach the age of 16. He can pinpoint this exact moment, as it coincided with British athlete Sebastian Coe’s unexpected win at the 1500-metre men’s race at the Moscow Olympics, which was being shown on the ward’s TV.

The gallery is dominated by a large central figure watching TV in a hospital bed. The TV, however, has morphed into Sebastian Coe, who is identifiable by his racing number 254 – coincidentally the exact moment that he won the race and that Jason’s parents simultaneously received their devastating news. Seb and Jason point at one another in opposition as their parallel dramas unfold. Instead of guns, toy soldiers that surround the figures wield viruses, referring to the metaphor used by Jason’s doctor to explain his autoimmune condition as an army of white blood cells that were attacking instead of defending him. The bed-bound figure’s cutaway sections, inspired by Wellcome Collection’s historic anatomical drawings, reveal what is happening inside his body. The body depicted here, however, transcends medical understanding and instead reflects how Jason feels, his feet swollen to gargantuan proportions to represent extreme pain, with fairground lights to depict the neurological signals from his brain to his body gone awry.

Equally monumental in scale are a pair of calliper boots, a motif that frequently appears in Wilsher-Mills’ work. Calliper boots were one of the many painful adaptive technologies that he was given to wear during his childhood. Though intended to support his weight and train his ankles, he found them pointless and burdensome. He has since reclaimed them as a symbol of pride and identity by reimagining them as boots that he would choose to wear. Resembling Dr Martens, they are emblazoned with the Union Jack flag – another motif that appears throughout the work. It is both a nod to Coe representing Britain and an outward manifestation of Wilsher-Mills’ inner mod.

‘Jason and the Adventure of 254’ functions as a time capsule of the popular culture that Wilsher-Mills consumed as a child. Imagery inspired by TV shows like ‘Batman’ and ‘Doctor Who’, and his favourite comic, The Beano, evoke a sense of 1970s nostalgia. He uses these influences to create a range of alter egos, such as Frankenfoot and MRI-boy, whose images paper the walls and chart events of personal significance and his metamorphosis from boy to man.

Ideas about transition and transformation are echoed in dioramas that are scattered throughout the installation. These three-dimensional miniature scenes are housed in button-operated machines, reminiscent of penny arcades that Wilsher-Mills recalls from family holidays to the seaside resort of Withernsea in Yorkshire and Humber. They present vignettes from his youth before and during his hospitalisation.

These dioramas – all created in 2024 – light up when a button is pressed. They act as windows into the artist’s mind, illuminating some of his most formative experiences. Rich in symbolism, they denote stages of transition – from childhood to puberty, and from the nascent beginnings of his creativity to becoming an artist. Family features strongly in these scenes. ‘Mum as a Mermaid’ illustrates Wilsher-Mills’ memory of his mother swimming in the North Sea at night-time, lit up by jellyfish. In this artwork she is transformed into a mermaid and dances with a North Sea cod, who is on crutches and has a tracheotomy. It is a joyful rendition of the relationship between mother and son, symbolising freedom, yet also a portent of what was to come.

Comedic scenes appear from Wilsher-Mills’ adolescence, which was spent almost entirely in a state of paralysis. ‘The Pee and the Fruit’ tells the story of Jason’s brother-in-law, who ate an apple from Jason’s bedside, which, unbeknown to him, had been covered in urine earlier – a fact Jason slyly relayed afterwards. ‘Uncle Dennis and the Inseminoids’ is an imaginary rendering of a 1981 sci-fi horror film that Wilsher-Mills has never seen. When visiting Jason in hospital, his Uncle Dennis would tell him about the VHS films he had been watching, whether age-appropriate or not. In this artwork, images from this recounted film combine with memories of his treatment. The alien depicted here represents his hospitalised body swimming with renegade white blood cells, while the phallic-looking cactus wearing calliper boots references the tandem processes of puberty and illness that he was undergoing.

Parallel lives are explored elsewhere in Wilsher-Mills’ work. ‘Trinity’ refers to his childhood talent as a rugby league player. It represents the physicality that he lost and imagines his future had illness not intervened. Meanwhile, ‘Painting with My Mouth’ acknowledges the pivotal role of his hospital education, without which he claims he would not have become an artist. Here, Jason portrays himself as a Dalek from ‘Doctor Who’, who is painting at an easel and is surrounded by miniature renditions of his other artworks. It is inspired by a portrait of Charles Dickens, author of Wilsher-Mills’ favourite book, ‘Great Expectations’ (1861), whose main character Pip’s life and social class is transformed by an education provided through a chance encounter. It is a portrait of the artist as a young man and hints at the culmination of the adventure that began at Pinderfields Hospital on 1 August 1980 at 2.54pm.