Art Against Knives founder: 'surgeons held my heart in their hands'

Road to recovery: Oliver Hemsley with his friend, business partner and fellow fundraiser Katy Dawe
10 April 2012

Like all good fashionistas, Oliver Hemsley comes with an entourage. Flitting around the Mayfair base of luxury retailer CoutureLab is Hemsley's PR, his friend and business partner Katy Dawe, and his web editor. Philippa DeVetta, head of fashion PR agency DeVetta, watches as the camera snaps while CoutureLab founder Carmen Busquets offers everyone chocolate (unanimously declined) and Mauro Durant, her creative director, proffers coffee (heartily accepted). Each is immaculately dressed — in black, of course — to fit with the slick surroundings.

It's not a bad turnout for a 22-year-old who hasn't even begun his fashion course at Central St Martins. Even he can't quite believe it. "I do have conversations and just say: F**k, how did this happen?," he says.

But then Hemsley isn't just any prospective student, he is also the co-founder (with Dawe) of a charity, Art Against Knives, whose fundraising exhibition and sale later this month through CoutureLab of pieces donated by top designers such as Christopher Kane, Marios Schwab, L'Wren Scott and Philip Treacy is why everyone is here.
And when he takes up his St Martins place next month it will be two years overdue.

It was in August 2008 that Hemsley could have last been considered a typical fresher. After two years in London, living in Shoreditch, he'd finished his foundation year and was having a good time. Then, on August 28, 2008, Hemsley was set upon by a gang of youths in an unprovoked attack. He was stabbed up to eight times in the back, heart, lungs and neck, and left for dead. He was flown by air ambulance to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel — on arrival, his heart had stopped. To revive him, the doctors had to perform a high-risk procedure where they open the chest cavity, remove the heart and bring it back to life.

"It's an incredible procedure because they literally lift out your heart and give it a squeeze," says Hemsley. He constantly cracks close-to-the-bone jokes about the attack, which he refers to as "that" or "the altercation". It left him unable to breathe without a ventilator or move from the neck down. He has had to learn to move his arms again and is now in a wheelchair.

He has no memories of the incident. "They pump you full of drugs, don't they — when you can't breathe," he says. And then, more seriously: "I think the brain is good at blocking things out that you don't really want to understand."

The next five months in intensive care are also "such a blur". "I wasn't aware how f***ed I was, basically." His memories are in snippets, "there were things like first food, first talking", he says. The day he started to regain movement in his big toe "was a good day". "When you see your dad cry because you can move something it is weird, let me tell you," he says.

Dawe and his parents visited every day. His parents moved from Cambridgeshire and stayed in a caravan so that they could be close to the hospital. "It wasn't ideal for a while for them," he says.

Once out of intensive care, he moved to a spinal injury unit at Stanmore for rehab. It was then that Dawe suggested they organise a fundraising evening together. "I could barely pick up a pen and I was just learning to draw again and Katy said, You need to draw the invitations'. It was great for my wellbeing ... When you're in there [hospital] it's incredible to have something to do that is different from going to the gym, physio, occupational therapy."

Dawe wrote a letter, put Hemsley's first bit of writing at the top of it, and went around Shoreditch door-knocking. From there, says Hemsley, "it escalated into something ridiculous". Before they knew it, Tracey Emin had emailed and wanted to be involved. By the time the fundraiser took place at Shoreditch House in May last year (Hemsley, still in hospital at the time, was "let out on day release") works had been donated for sale by Anthony Gormley, Ron Arad, Banksy, Richard Nicoll, Nicholas Kirkwood and Marios Schwab to name just a few. Many of them, plus some celebrity buyers, attended the event themselves.

"It wasn't just more gang-on-gang violence," says Hemsley. "It alerted everyone in the little art and fashion community to be like: Wow, this is actually affecting us now, because Shoreditch is where everybody lives."

A Crime Survey report released in Julyshowed 33,566 recorded knife offences in England and Wales in the past year, with 4,700 people requiring hospital treatment for stab wounds. A recent episode of Channel 4's series The Hospital focused on The Royal London's trauma surgeon, Mike Walsh, who treated Hemsley.

Dawe and Hemsley's fundraiser has now become a full-blown charity, Art Against Knives. They want to raise money for a project called OurSpace, which aims to reduce knife crime by engaging young people from troubled areas, encouraging them to design and sustain a creative space for themselves. "We both had creative resources and opportunities that don't exist for people in east London," says Hemsley. "This is not about saying put down your knives and make a dress instead. It's about bringing people like those guys [his attackers] in to create whatever they want to with the space."

For the second fundraiser, on September 21, Erdem, Giles Deacon, Peter Pilotto, Hussein Chalayan (among many others) are all donating pieces for sale.

Meanwhile, Hemsley is heading back to St Martins. "This foot can still push a sewing machine pedal," he says, tapping his left leg. "Drawing was the one thing I was not wanting to think about. I didn't have any fine motor skills. It was shaky but I've got back to it." Term starts next month — and he'll start it with better contacts than he could have ever imagined.

The Art Against Knives sale is on September 21, 10am-7pm, 37 Davies Street, W1. Details: couturelab.com.

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