Dada-News
Blog: January 2012 • Colin Hambrook
As Dada-South prepares to rebrand itself, Colin Hambrook looks back to the organisations' beginnings and gives a few highlights of the artists, projects and artwork that have inspired him
Dada-South has been a big part of my life for many years now. It's been a wonderful privilege to meet all the artists and engage in all the work that I've been writing about on a monthly basis in this blog over the last six years. I look back with great affection to Dada-South's big pink launch at the Fabrica Gallery in Brighton in April 2005. It was the launch of the first of the Go Make! commissions. I took my 2 year old daughter along who became the life and the soul of the party. We were both fascinated by an installation piece by Noemi Lakmaier.
It was the first time I'd encountered anything by Noemi. 'Appropriated Accounts' was a forbidding looking, old-fashionned, metal and fabric pram painted a glossy fire brick red. The powerful image has stayed with me - although I had to search Disability Arts Online to remind myself of the title of the piece, which strikes me now as equally enigmatic. My guess would be that the piece is 'appropriated' in the sense that it is a 'ready made' - something that once had a functional use that has been turned into an art object. As an 'account' it could be a reference to the infantilisation of disabled people... but I am getting ahead of myself here.
Having started this blog with the intention of looking back over some of the inspirational moments brought to fruition through the work of Dada-South, I find myself musing on other striking pieces of artwork that came along the way. These all exemplify the vision of the organisation to place artwork made by disabled people - professionals who may or may not call themselves 'disabled artists - in a context which has allowed those artists to develop their careers.
Tony Heaton's 'Squarinthecircle?' was finally installed in the Portsmouth City Centre in 2008. It was an awesome piece of public disability arts sculpture made from five huge pieces of Portland stone. It was the centre piece for a much larger project which engaged Signdance Collective, Jon Adams, Joolz Cave-Berry and Mark Ware to work with students from the Department of Architecture & Interior Design at the University of Portsmouth. Workshops in movement, installation and visual arts were designed to give the students a creative experience of thinking laterally about access as an essential ingredient to making public spaces inviting for everyone.
It was a fabulous idea and led to further collaborations with Diablo Arts through Architecture Inside Out which led to some dynamic workshops in the Tate Modern. Partnerships with large mainstream arts organisations have been at the heart of Dada-South's way of working. Hidden Battles - Caroline Cardus exhibition at Fort Brockhurst heralded the beginning of the development of the current Accentuate project called 'Creative Landscapes' through forging a relationship with English Heritage.
I loved the images of fragile shadow puppets that were produced through a series of workshops with local disabled people working with Caroline. The idea was to explore the everyday battles and barriers that disabled people face within the largely inaccessible environment of the Napoleonic Fort.
The professional development and networking programmes Dada-South has produced over the years - Living Newsletter, Know Your Business, Dada Exchange - have all been managed with a sensitivity to the reluctance that many individuals have to pigeon-holing themselves as disabled artists. I've met some wonderful artists through these events - and a theme that has run through so much of what has taken place - has been the dichotomy of the struggles that living with impairment affords the individual, alongside a reluctance to disclose disability, publicly.
I've written about it often in my blogs on Dada-South and on DAO. That nurturing of talent through the complexities of the kinds of problems that impairment presents - is a key role that Arts Development Agencies like Dada-South perform. The organisation has been a life-line to many emerging artists especially, helping individuals through the tricky process of redefining what they do and who they are. For me personally - Up-Stream was pivotal to my development as an artist and poet. I have continued to work at my creative processes and to market what I've been producing in ways that wouldn't have happened without the huge impetus the commission gave me.
At the beginning of February 2012 Dada-South is going through a rebrand to help the organisation redefine its creative endeavours in working with artists marginalised by disability. I will continue to blog as the organisation moves through it's next stage of development. In order to help streamline the organisations' resources any listings that you have in the future - can be promoted via DAO. To publicise your news, events, jobs and opportunities to the wider disability arts community, please upload details on to the online forms on DAO at http://www.disabilityartsonline.org.uk/Send_us_your_listings
Listings posted on DAO are sent out on a weekly basis to the mailing list of 2000 addresses. If you don't receive these bulletins already, then please add your email address to the form at http://www.disabilityartsonline.org.uk/Join_our_mailing_list
DAO will continue to review and showcase the work of artists being supported by the new Dada-South so please contact me via editor@disabilityartsonline.org.uk if you are looking to develop an online presence for your artwork.
On that note I'll wish you all a fruitful 2012.
Images above: Still from Being me Being, Sarah Scott and photo of installation The Door by Lorna Giezot
Images below: Squaring the Circle - Tony Heaton, Ruby Slippers - Caroline Cardus, Blood and Fire - Jack Bull, Un-Titled - David Dixon
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