Skip to main content

‘I was blown away by the work I saw’: the Turner prize and the rise of neurodiverse art

Six years ago, they were told they shouldn’t be in the same building as ‘artists of calibre’. But, with a Turner nomination under their belt, life is changing for the Project Art Works collective and other neurodiverse artists

‘Everyone’s done brilliant, not just me.” I’m chatting to Lucy, an artist with Project Art Works, about the Hastings-based collective’s Turner prize nomination (they lost out to Belfast’s Array Collective in the end). Today she’s in the character of Listey Cat; Lucy’s work revolves around her love of animals, which often manifests in the form of the bright, elaborate costumes she makes and has worn to give gallery tours. “It’s given us more independence and we get to work with other artists,” she says, of the collective. “I feel lucky and chill. It’s therapeutic.”

Founded in 1996, Project Art Works collaborates with neurodiverse artists and those with complex support needs, providing them with studio space, materials and facilitators. Tom, who works with lead artist Lucy, is like many of the facilitators also an artist, and is keen to stress the collaborative nature of the practice: “It’s a mutual experience,” he says. “I support Lucy and she supports me.”

Neurodiversity has become something of a buzzword in recent years. It’s about replacing the stigmatisation of people with conditions such as autism with the recognition that these are simply normal variations, with qualities of their own. The Turner nomination suggests that the art world finally seems to be catching on. Though perhaps not fast enough, if some of the attitudes Project Art Works CEO and artist director Kate Adams has encountered are anything to go by: “It was only about six years ago that a head of exhibition somewhere within an organisation said to us, ‘I don’t think it’s right [to have] people with learning disabilities in an exhibition downstairs with an artist of calibre upstairs. They shouldn’t be in the same building.’”

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3qnrj9x
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One giant leap: meet the new generation of male ballet stars

Beauty, strength and bags of energy: BBC Four’s Men at the Barre documentary gets up close and personal with the Royal Ballet dancers on the rise ‘It’s a golden era of male ballet dancers.” So says Emma Cahusac, the commissioning editor behind a new documentary, Men at the Barre, part of BBC Four’s dance season. It’s not just hyperbole. The young men rising up at the Royal Ballet are some of the most exciting in dance right now: principals Matthew Ball and Marcelino Sambé, first soloists Cesar Corrales and William Bracewell, and first artist Joseph Sissens all feature in Men at the Barre. With the majority of them British or UK-trained, it’s a giant leap from the grumblings of a decade ago about the lack of local dancers making it to the top. I spoke to Ball, Corrales and Sambé by phone, all staying resolutely positive during this enforced break from their intensive dancing lives, but all desperate to get back to work with colleagues they’re certain are something special. “I see so m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dita Von Teese: ‘Even when I was a bondage model, I had big-time boundaries’

As the star dives into a giant glass of fizz for her first online extravaganza, she talks about this new golden age for burlesque, why the French Strictly gives her costume problems – and how #MeToo has changed her Dita Von Teese is looking divine. Her lips are that signature red, she’s wearing 1950s cat eye glasses, and her black hair falls in a thick wave across a Snow White skin – and all this on the unglamorous stage of a glitchy Zoom call. Only knowing Von Teese from her femme fatale image, her teasingly aloof burlesque performances, and her time in the tabloids as former wife of goth rocker Marilyn Manson , you might expect an icy demeanour, an impermeable mystique. So it’s surprising to discover quite how normal she is: chatty, self-deprecating, not very vampish. It’s easy to see traces of Heather Sweet, the “super shy” girl from small-town Michigan who transformed into Von Teese. The reason for our conversation is a new film, Night of the Teese, made with director Quinn Wils...
Post a Comment
Read more