| Project title: | Alone Again, I |
| Location: | West Acre Gallery, King’s Lynn, UK |
| Date(s): | 30th March to 7th April 2024 |
Artist Statement
“Alone Again,I….is just that, alone again, me, you, the person next to you and everyone in the same room who are stood together. Yet we’re still alone. Alone in what we see, feel and imagine. Where we stand or sit right now, our outlook is unique. Alone locked within our thoughts ready to embrace the unexpected. The anticipation of experiencing something new is what guides us to make positive changes, and that’s when we become the educators.”
Michelle Louise Carter (Dark Art Norfolk) , March 2024
As an artist with a disability I’m aware of being more vulnerable to darkness and sorrow, both that go undetected by the less creative or sensitive person. I use the language of figuration and landscape to reproduce feelings of isolation, grief and trauma in physical disability. My work addresses these representations in the natural world to convey the relation to grief and trauma unintentionally caused by misunderstanding how disabilities affect daily living. In my practice I work with sculpture, painting, drawing, poetry and music. I also use my own materials from my own made pigments and charcoal from locally foraged natural elements. I draw upon lived experiences of disability in my work.
My eye sight is dimmed, my legs are like jelly, my mind wanders ahead of itself, the days are a jumble of odd happenings, sometimes making me and those around me smile. The unpredictability of living with a neurological condition is full of surprises, pain and anxiety. In my work I aim to fracture and reassemble the mind-set of the ableist, finding empowerment in the disabled unruly body, by creating a visual concept to invoke dissemination in the discriminative ableist’ mind-set.
Contextual Statement
My work sits within the artistic context of artists working with the area of disability and lived experiences. I have worked with paint, ink, clay, plaster and cement to create large paintings and long-lasting structures which have been exhibited at West Acre Gallery in King’s Lynn from 30th March to 7th April 2024. A warning was placed at the entrance to my exhibition, explaining that mildly disturbing images were on display that may make some visitors uneasy. I believe in pushing to the limits of acceptability when making work that conveys an important message.
I have experimented with sculpting heads of new born babies and setting them amongst locally collected branches, set upon a large log. The series of sculptures named “Branch Babies” aesthetically challenged my ideas for the project, as they were immediately wrongly conveyed by fellow artists, friends and family when they were were displayed in the grounds of my local church in Heacham during February 2024. The feedback was overwhelming, strongly emphasising that the sculptures failed to send the correct message to onlookers. It was clear I had to make a definite shift and include different sculptures in order to successfully conjecture my visual representations.
My methodology has drawn upon the notion of the unruly body through sculpture and form including ‘crip humour’. Goldsmiths CCA 2023 ‘Unruly Bodies’ exhibition, focuses on the grotesque features of a selection of women artists who feel their bodies are monstrous. Some of the artwork is explicit and for me strikes a dark chord and emotion. Suzannah B. Mintz, the author of the book “Unruly Bodies: Life writing by women with disabilities” (2007), researched about feelings of isolation and how the individual is often misunderstood or people don’t know how to react to meeting them. Aaron Williamson, the deaf artist, coined the term ‘Deaf Gain’ as a counter-emphasis to hearing loss. He was part of the “Art of the Lived Experiment”; 23 International artists working with disabilities and featured a glimpse into their working experiments, trials and errors. Paraplegic photographer Christopher Samuel’s exhibition “Unseen” was a series of photographic prints of himself in areas around Blackpool that are inaccessible; he was carried for miles by his friends who collaborated with the project. I have worked with artist Lesley Williams who was the curator, Ian Newness a carpenter, local artists Kerry Long and Esther Boehm, Shane Humberstone my PA and Gallery Director Abbey Stirling. I have used new skills and techniques that have widened my scope for the development of this and future projects, including forging new relationships and networks.
Documentation
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