Jason and the Adventure of the 254 Jason Wilsher-Mills is a new solo exhibition by the artist Jason Wilsher-Mills MBE, commissioned by Wellcome Collection.
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.
The exhibition will take place in Blackpool at the same time that the artist is exhibiting as part of Blackpool Iluminations and Blackpool's Lightpool Festival.
Reimagining the gallery space as a hospital ward, Jason and the Adventure of the 254, is an immersive installation of sculptures, illustrations and interactive dioramas that challenge 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.
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 Blackpool Illuminations, Blackpool, Lightpool Festival, Blackpool, 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. His 2025 exhibition 'Are We There Yet ?' won the global Museums and Heritage Award for Temporary or Touring Exhibition of the Year and also in 2025, the artist received an MBE in the King's Birthday Honours List.