MISERIS SUCCURRERE DISCO

We’re thrilled to reveal more details of our second exhibition as inaugural Curators-in-Residence at the glorious Fitzrovia Chapel.

Miseris Succurrere Disco follows on from Souvenir. Again drawing on strategies of filmmaking and storytelling and pulling from literature, performance, music, visual arts, craft and design, Miseris Succurrere Disco takes its title from the motto of the former Middlesex Hospital, the hospital which The Fitzrovia Chapel served. It is most simply translated as “I learn to help those in need” and originates from Virgil’s Aeneid – Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco (“Having known misfortune myself, I am learning to help those in distress”). The exhibition reflects on how personal tragedy can awaken empathy, mercy and collective care.

Set within The Fitzrovia Chapel’s luminous Byzantine-inspired interior, the exhibition explores grief, sanctuary and transcendence through a series of newly commissioned works that invite audiences into an experiential, durational environment shaped by sound, light and scent. The curators imagine the chapel as a vessel of memory – asking what the marble might recall if it could listen: solitary expressions of grief, whispered prayers and bargaining with fate, the call and response of services, and moments of reassurance shared between strangers.

At the heart of Miseris Succurrere Disco is a major new sound commission by the experimental vocal collective NYX, featuring six vocalists – Rhianna Compton, Sian O’Gorman, Rachel Oyawale, AK Patterson, Plumm and Helen Walpole, along with string and organ arrangements by multi-instrumentalist Alicia Jane Turner. Created as a choral and electronic composition, the 20-minute work takes visitors on a transcendental journey from despair to solace. Designed to loop and play three times an hour, the piece will unfold within an enhanced acoustic environment developed in collaboration with Arup, whose expertise in spatial sound design will allow audiences to experience the visceral highs and lows of the composition as an embodied, immersive encounter.

Working in dialogue with NYX’s new sound piece, scenographer Emmanuel Biard will present a new light sculpture positioned at the chapel’s marble altar. A single moving beam will slowly trace the spine of the building, transforming the space from intimate and shadowed to expansive and euphoric. The shifting light will animate the chapel’s intricate architecture, dancing between light and darkness while casting dramatic silhouettes through the suspended pendants, encouraging audiences to look upward and experience the building itself as a living participant in the exhibition.

Further extending the sensory landscape, the olfactive design studio Denim-Sykes will create a subtle, evocative scent work in two parts. One scent – faint and ghostlike – will inhabit the narthex as people enter, evoking the lingering memory of the Middlesex Hospital corridor that was once connected to the chapel. A second scent, more present near the altar, will evoke petrichor – the earthy aroma of rain and renewal – introducing a note of change, relief and human warmth.

This experience – charged with sonic, olfactive and atmospheric cues – will also feature a sculptural object displayed on the chapel font by London-based artist and joint winner of the 2019 Turner Prize, Tai Shani. A symbolic totem, capable of anchoring us in the here and now. Shani has long developed a potent lexicon of symbolic forms — fragmentary cosmologies infused with post-patriarchal energy. Her work resists monumentality as dominance; instead it proposes myth as a site of collective reimagining.

Miseris Succurrere Disco forms the second chapter in a trilogy of exhibitions curated by Forsyth & Pollard throughout 2026, each responding to the layered histories of The Fitzrovia Chapel and the surrounding former Middlesex Hospital site. The third, and final exhibition, Middlesex Hospital Blues, will open from 16 October – 18 November 2026. Each exhibition is accompanied by a limited edition booklet with images and texts relating to the exhibition, including newly commissioned writing by the Mexican-American novelist Chloe Aridjis. Designed by Chris Bigg, of the legendary design studio v23, with photography by Paul Heartfield. Continuing our long-term collaboration, audio design will be led by Raj Patel at Arup, with Joseph Digerness and Matthew Lomax, bringing their unique combination of skills in acoustics and spatial sound design to craft the sonic experience with us.

These shows form part of the chapel’s annual cultural programme.

Opening times: 

11am to 6pm Monday – Saturday 
12pm to 5pm Sunday
Admission free 

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