Disabled people make up less than 5% of the arts and creative industries workforce, yet represent around 20% of the population. The works of disabled artists are rarely included in major exhibitions, collections and performance venues; yet disability arts has evolved as a significant cultural influence, and disabled artists are highly active and seeking recognition across all disciplines.
Drop in to Ghosts in the Machine, a series of workshops, interactive artwork events, performances and talks looking at how people interact with and produce art that discusses disability. Interrogating the seen and the unseen, Ghosts in the Machine aims to challenge and explore prevailing assumptions about the role of disabled people in art and culture and investigate the intersections of inclusion, (in)visibility and contribution. All events are wheelchair accessible with British Sign Language support available.
This event is programmed by Shape Arts, a Tate Exchange Associate.
On every day
NDACA and Poppy Nash - No More Pity
National Disability Arts Collection and Archive (NDACA) commissioned artist Poppy Nash, who specialises in textiles and illustration work, presents a free, drop-in creative session exploring the heritage of the Disability Arts Movement.
Poppy invites you to contribute slogans and ideas in response to the provocation ‘what does equality mean to you now?’, which she will then re-interpret into text printed onto material, in response to the barriers that disabled people have faced within the past and present. The finished work will become a disability arts banner for modern times, joining important Disability Arts Movement heritage items in NDACA’s own archive. Visitors are encouraged to respond to NDACA’s archive with the team members, engaging in conversation and learning about the radical history of the Movement.
Damien Robinson – Object-orientation
Drop in for a free workshop session delivered by artist Damien Robinson to examine hidden experiences and meanings through two photographic techniques: light painting and scanning.
Participants are encouraged to bring along a small, hand-held object of personal significance and containing a ‘hidden story’ which you’d like to share with others via creative exploration. Record your objects via scanning accompanied by story-telling, or capture gestures and movement using light painting, a photographic technique in which exposures are made by moving a hand-held light source while taking a long exposure photograph. These outcomes will be displayed and shared with other visitors to Ghosts in the Machine, presenting publicly that which is often private and unseen.
Damien Robinson works with digital and found media, mixing ‘low’ approaches with higher-tech strategies. She re-purposes and recycles materials, exploring the technology we use and discard, and the content it conveys. Booking is not required, however due to limited capacity there may be a short wait for entry.
Nina Thomas and Anahita Harding - We interrupt our disappearance
Join artists Anahita Harding and Nina Thomas for We interrupt our disappearance, an interactive performance-installation designed to provoke exploration and questioning. Drawing inspiration from their work around archives, the work investigates hidden disability histories through real and imagined sources using storytelling, artist publication, and collage, inviting the viewer to participate.
Nina and Anahita met while working with Shape project NDACA (The National Disability Arts Collection and Archive); their experience working with the archive has inspired the development of this project.
Jason Wilsher-Mills – Brave Boy Billy
Self-described ‘analogue digital artist’ Jason Wilsher-Mills uses a range of digital media, such as iPads and 3D printing to tell the hidden stories of disability. His recent augmented reality sculpture Brave Boy Billy will be on display at Ghosts in the Machine where, in the presence of the artist, viewers will be invited to interact physically with the work via a tablet or smartphone, unlocking its augmented reality aspects through triggers positioned throughout the work’s surface, releasing animation and audio.
Saturday 3 March
Jason Wilsher-Mills – Digital Drawing Workshop
12.30 - 14.00 and 14.30 - 16.00
Join Jason Wilsher-Mills at Ghosts in the Machine for one of two free, hands-on digital drawing workshops. Led closely by the artist, participants will be given access to iPads and imparted with the tools and knowledge needed to make art digitally and tell their own stories.
On display in the space will be the artist’s well-known work ‘1995 Disability Discrimination Act’, a fifteen foot printed canvas banner created through iPad painting, and currently held in Shape’s art collection.
These workshops are open to the public and booking is not necessary, however places will be allocated on the day on a first-come, first-served basis.
Noëmi Lakmaier – The Task of Containing
12.00 - 16.00, Tate Modern Terrace Cafe
Noëmi Lakmaier is a performance artist based in London, who has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. In 2008 she was awarded Shape Arts’ inaugural Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary (ARMB) and accompanying three month residency at Camden Arts Centre.
To celebrate the ten year anniversary of this artist award Noëmi has created a new work for Ghosts in the Machine, Shape’s second Tate Exchange programme, entitled The Task of Containing. Taking place outdoors between Tate Modern and the Thames, this installation and durational performance piece is an homage to Adam Reynolds’ unrealised performance ‘Sisyphus’ and explores themes of futility and meaning through repetitive and seemingly meaningless acts.
About Shape Arts
Shape Arts is a disability-led arts organisation which works to improve access to culture for disabled people by providing opportunities for disabled artists, training cultural institutions to be more open to disabled people, and through running participatory arts and development programmes.