DISABLED ARTISTS TAKE OVER 30 MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES ACROSS THE UK TO CELEBRATE THE JOY OF DADA
We are Invisible We are Visible
To mark the 102nd anniversary of the 1st Dada International Exhibition in Berlin, 31 d/Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent artists will stage Dada inspired interventions in 30 museums and galleries across Britain and Northern Ireland on the same day on 2 July 2022.
Saturday 2 July 2022, 10am-6pm
Out of Order, an intervention by artists Tony Heaton and Terry Smith will take place at BALTIC to mark the 102nd anniversary of the 1st Dada International Exhibition in Berlin. Alongside 31 d/Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent artists, a series of inspired interventions will interact with 30 museums and galleries across Britain and Northern Ireland on 2 July 2022.
Disability Arts has often been described as the last remaining avant-garde movement of the 21st century. In reference to Dadaism, an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, Heaton and Smith will create notions of absurdity, irrationalism, and spontaneity by perplexing audiences with their intervention around BALTIC’s public lifts.
As a wheelchair user, Heaton is interested in the response and reaction of the audience to his performances and interventions which often highlight privilege, rights to access, and the daily obstacles that some individuals face.
We are Invisible We are Visible (WAIWAV)
To mark the 102nd anniversary of the 1st Dada International Exhibition in Berlin, 31 d/Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent artists will stage Dada inspired interventions in 30 museums and galleries across Britain and Northern Ireland on the same day on 2 July 2022. The interventions cover a wide range including performative; time based; ephemeral; quirky; unusual; minimal; solo/duo/group; digital and much more.
The project asks the question - What if the Dada movement had started in 2020 in lockdown? What would they have done? Is now a timely moment to resurrect the spirit and essence of Dada?
The event with the title We are Invisible We are Visible (WAIWAV) is presented by DASH, the disabled led visual arts organisation, and was awarded the 2021 Ampersand Prize.
WAIWAV host galleries:
Arnolfini, Bristol; John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton; The Pier Arts Centre, Stromness; Centre for Contemporary Art Derry~Londonderry; Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast; VOID, Derry; Grizedale Arts, Cumbria; Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston; HOME, Manchester; Liverpool Biennial; Manchester Art Gallery; Tate Liverpool; Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; The Hepworth, Wakefield; Leeds Art Gallery; MIMA - Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art ; Site Gallery, Sheffield; Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea; Ikon, Birmingham; Nottingham Contemporary; Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall; Tate St Ives; Firstsite, Colchester, Essex; Focal Point Gallery, Southend on Sea; MK Gallery, Milton Keynes; Modern Art Oxford; Tate Britain, London; Tate Modern, London; Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne; Turner Contemporary, Margate.
The WAIWAV artists:
Stav Meishar; AIM (Art In Motion); Tony Heaton /Terry Smith; Bel Pye; Kristina Veasey; Chris Tally Evans; Porcelain Delaney; Nicola Woodham; Grace Currie; Alice Quarterman; Dora Colquhoun; April Lin 林森; Lisette Auton; Caroline Cardus; Jenette Coldrick; Ashokkumar Mistry; Cheryl Beer; Sonia Boué; Christina Lovey; Alex Billingham; Luke ‘Luca’ Cockayne; Andrea Mindel; gobscure; Jo Munton/Stephanie Finegan; Mianam Bashir/Emma Powell; Aaron Williamson; Sam Metz; Hayley Hindle; Anahita Harding; Chisato Minamimura; Alistair Gentry.
Tony Heaton OBE
TONY HEATON
Tony Heaton OBE is a British sculptor, disability rights activist and arts administrator, who was appointed an OBE in 2013 for services to the arts and the disability arts movement. He was CEO of the arts organisation Shape until March 2017. Heaton has exhibited nationally and internationally. Major commissions include Gold Lamé winning the commission to be the first sculpture sited on the Liverpool Plinth in 2018 and Monument to the Unintended Performer, installed on the Big 4 outside Channel 4 TV in celebration of the 2012 London Paralympics. He initiated NDACA, the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive.
Terry Smith
Terry Smith (circa 1956) made in London, lives in Folkestone. In 2008, Smith was a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Award. He is known for his cut outs into the plaster of walls, mainly in derelict buildings and spaces. Smith notably held the keys to Tate Turbine Hall during the building of the hall in 1995–1996, having been given permission to create his sculptures in the walls and spaces of the hall. Only the staff at the Tate and a few invitees were permitted access to the works areas inside the Turbine Hall and other areas of the building site to see Smith's work. Smith has exhibited extensively in the UK and South America (e.g., Instituto de Artes, Porte Alegre, Brazil, Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, Caracas, Venezuela and Museo X-Tersea, Mexico City.).
John Woolrich
John Woolrich has composed a new work for the flute that will be recorded live on Saturday 2nd July by the renowned Flutist Lelia Marshall.
John Woolrich has founded a group (the Composers Ensemble), a festival (Hoxton New Music Days), and has been composer in association with the Orchestra of St John’s and the Britten Sinfonia. His collaborations with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group led to his appointment in 2002 as Artist-in-Association. He was guest Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival in 2004 and Associate Artistic Director of the festival from 2005 to 2010. From 2010 to 2013 Woolrich was both Artistic Director of Dartington International Summer School and Professor of Music at Brunel University. From 2013 to 2016 he was Artistic Director of Mirepoix Musique in France. He is currently an Associate Artist of the Gulbenkian Arts Centre, Kent University.
Lelia Marshall
A graduate of the RCS, Leila gained her Bachelor of Music degree under the tutelage of Katherine Bryan. In 2017, she won the Edinburgh Competition Festival concerto prize and was awarded the Colin MacLean Bursary Award to further her studies. Leila went on to graduate with Distinction from the Master of Music program at the Royal Northern College of Music where she studied with Kevin Gowland and Laura Jellicoe. Her time at the RNCM saw the formation of her wind quintet, Festivo Winds. Festivo won the June Emerson Launchpad Award, the John Fewkes Chamber Prize for winds and were ‘Audience favourite’ at the Christopher Rowland Chamber Ensemble of the Year competition.
OUT OF ORDER
In response to the project We are Invisible We are Visible the artist and activist Tony Heaton invited Terry Smith to collaborate on a new project. Out of Order emerged out of these discussions.
Access All Areas Venice Agendas 2016
OUT OF ORDER we apologise for any inconvenience….
An intervention by Tony Heaton & Terry Smith
OUT OF ORDER shines a spotlight on break-down, barriers and dysfunction.
We chose the BALTIC because we really love this gallery, we like the position of the lifts, highly visible, but…
They are inadequate in number and they are unreliable, they break down too often. This is not unusual to the BALTIC, they are brave enough to acknowledge it but it happens in very many public art galleries and other public-facing buildings all the time, we could have chosen many other buildings. It’s an issue that does not get recorded or raised, we think because it mainly only has a negative effect on those with the quietest voices and the least power. Disabled people.
Many disabled people and all wheelchair-users rely on Lifts to access public buildings like publicly-funded art galleries such as the BALTIC.
Non-disabled people never have to think about or worry if lifts are out of order, being serviced or even being full, they can use their freedom of choice to take the stairs. Disabled people can’t and rely on lifts being sufficient in number and in full working order… BUT, often this is not the case, lifts are very often out-of-order, this is stressful and more than inconvenient for disabled people who want to enjoy the experiences everyone else takes for granted.
There are around 15 million Disabled People in the UK, around 20% of the population.
Many children, families with prams and buggies and elderly people rely on lifts for easy access who add to these numbers, it’s a big issue.
So why is it that architects routinely fail to provide adequate lifts into public buildings?
Why do public-funders give tax-payers money to schemes that do not give adequate access?
When it’s obvious that lifts break down, need servicing and have a limited life-span do public facing buildings like the BALTIC have to put up with old, out-dated and frequently out-of-order lifts which inconvenience many?
Why are lifts commissioned from makers who are thousands of miles away and it takes months for many of the spare parts to arrive, a cheap install but an expensive on-going problem in the long-term, a false economy that many commissioners don’t realise at the time of construction but will come back to haunt them once they are in service.
It might be the lifts that are ‘out of order’ but really, it’s the attitudes of those in power that fail to provide adequate provision who are really ‘out of order’ – this intervention is a provocation to all of those visionless architects, cowardly planners, indiscriminate funders, inept decision-makers, those with power and rank, they are out of order and we are dedicating this work to them…
