Online: Recorded Samhain Inspired performances by Linda Stupart, Hasti, and Kasra Jalilipour

18 November – 2 December 2024 - Online Screening

For November’s Digbeth First Friday, we hosted an evening of Samhain inspired performances, where Linda Stupart, Hasti, and Kasra Jalilipour shared their amazing work with us.

Samhain is a Celtic Pagan festival which marks the ending and beginning of the year. This festival has historically been celebrated widely across Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. With the coming of Christianity to the British Isles, Samhain shifted into what we now know as Halloween. It is the time of year when the veil between this world and the next is at its thinnest, leaving the boundaries between the two blurred and porous. We interpret Samhain as the beginning of Winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the Gaelic word for November, the celebration of the end of Harvest time, a queer turning, a time to venerate all ancestors.

We recognise that we don’t currently have an accessible gallery space, and people may not be able to visit us in person for a whole multitude of reasons. As such, we worked with Robert Alexander films to produce recordings of each performance, so that they can be viewed from the comfort of your own home, and from anywhere in the world. These recordings will be available until Monday 2 December, and each has a transcript accompanying it, available as both a PDF and a Word document.

Visit the Grand Union homepage to watch the playback of the performances with transcriptions and auto-captions avialable for each.

Finding support in the arts when chronically ill, d/Deaf, disabled, neurodivergent, mad and/or sick

A guide to get­ting start­ed as an artist, mak­ing con­nec­tions, spe­cif­ic sup­port to be found in the sec­tor and access support.

In this guide commissioned by Visual Arts South West I cover; getting started as an artist; making connections locally in the South West and further afield; specific support to be found in the sector for chronically ill, d/Deaf, disabled, neurodivergent, mad and/or sick artists; what kind of access support can be found when applying for funding and jobs; access riders; and some further reading and artists to explore.

The text is approximately 28 minutes reading time as someone who reads at a medium pace with a slight information processing delay, and without clicking on any links.

Where possible I have tried to clarify what kind of media each link will lead to. There is an audio version avialable too with a pdf of the links.

For the full resource visit the Visual Arts South West website by clicking here.

Babeworld x utopian_realism; Love is Real, and it’s Inside Of My Computer

Launching Friday 3 May, Grand Union are excited to announce Babeworld’s biggest exhibition to date. Working in collaboration with sound artist utopian_realism they present a project reflecting on the ever-ubiquitous need within the arts to have new and innovative ideas.

Told through the eyes of a neurodivergent coded character, ‘Love is Real, and it’s Inside Of My Computer‘ plays on the structures of the gallery and art world, asking us to question and renegotiate how we define what is considered ’new’, ‘exciting’, and ‘taste making’ in the arts.

Fusing immersive design, pop-culture-infused soundscape, anime-inspired moving image, and embedded access, ‘Love is Real, and it’s Inside Of My Computer‘ utilises gaming and internet cultural references as entry points for arts and non-arts audiences; offering new perspectives on neurodivergent obsession as a creative process and problematising the impact of gallery expectations on mental health.

Based on Babeworld’s lived experience as an intersectionally disabled collective, this commission navigates the fine line between mental productivity and mental burnout through an experiential understanding of disability whilst exposing the alienation of marginalised folk in the art world. To support Babeworld’s shift from objective and medicalised discussions about disability to empowered personal experiences, the artists will prioritise multiple access modes, including digital and online.

Exhibition launch: Friday 3 May, 4-8pm

Exhibition open: Saturday 4 May – Saturday 3 August

For more information visit the Grand Union website by clicking here.

Access Toolkit for Artworkers

This is a practical resource for artworkers, such as curators, producers and arts administrators working independently or in galleries, museums and arts organisations.

This toolkit contains practical information on how to plan, produce, and exhibit accessible art projects including information on access riders, financial planning, slow production, display, and creating an accessible workplace. This information is intended to address the access barriers faced by d/Deaf, neurodivergent, chronically ill and disabled artists, audiences and artworkers, and those who experience ableism. The information in this toolkit has been gathered from a wide range of disabled artists, curators and producers and those working in arts organisations dedicated to commissioning disabled artists. It has also been informed by the author’s own experience as a disabled curator, who has faced access barriers and ableism working in the arts. It is most relevant to working in the UK and Ireland but is applicable in a wide set of contexts. This is not an exhaustive resource but is intended to support artworkers to begin the process of addressing ableism in their practices and workplaces to ensure they are accessible for disabled artists, audiences, colleagues and themselves.

It is the responsibility of artworkers to undo the ableism in art spaces and commit to access as an ongoing practice in an effort to eradicate access barriers for working, making and experiencing art for d/Deaf, neurodivergent, chronically ill and disabled communities.

Access Toolkit for Artworkers is supported by the Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice award and the Creative Production Supports initiative field:arts.

Author: Iarlaith Ní Fheorais

Editor: Hannah Wallis

Advisers: Bridget O’Gorman, Hannah Wallis, Kat Hawkins, Jamila Prowse, Jo Verrant, Leah Clements, Linda Rocco and Maggie Matić

For the full toolkit, please visit the website by clicking here.

Beverley Bennett; Simon Says/Dadda

Grand Union is delighted to announce Simon Says/Dadda, an exhibition by Birmingham and London based artist Beverley Bennett.

Comprising a newly commissioned 3-channel installation, Simon Says/Dadda is a collaborative project exploring father/daughter relationships among Black and Asian women and non-binary individuals, highlighting the deep impact that structural inequalities have within wider society.

Working in partnership with Metal, Liverpool, LUX, London and The Newbridge Project, Newcastle, Simon Says/Dadda is an ambitious large-scale film project developed through a series of gatherings across England, bringing to light stories that are currently not represented in the visual arts space.

For more information about the exhibtion, visit the Grand Union website by clicking here.

Temporalities of Access

5 November 2022, 12-5.30pm 

Online 

Temporalities of Access is a partnership event between A Language of Holes and British Art Network funded project, The Art of Captioning. Both projects are supported by Wysing Arts Centre and this event, on Saturday 5 November will bring together the culmination of a year’s research into the creative possibilities of captioning, along with the necessity of centering access and accessibility arts contexts. 

Speakers to be announced soon.  

Animating Archives Workshop 4; Creative Captioning in the Archive

This workshop, organised by Beth Bramich and Hatty Nestor on behalf of Women’s Art Library Goldsmiths and led by myself and Sarah Hayden, aimed to introduce PhD researchers and others to a range of creative approaches to captioning, exploring what this can bring to working with art and activist archives. 

The Art of Captioning is a British Art Network research group that brings together artists, curators, researchers, activists and access workers to address the state of captioning and access awareness in British Art. This workshop began with a presentation about The Art of Captioning’s ongoing work on access as ethos, which was available for participants to join remotely as well as in-person at 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, Brixton. Below is a recording of Hannah and Sarah’s presentation introduced by Catherine Grant and live-captioned in the gallery by Kate, a stenographer who works for the company 121 Captions.  

For the full session recording, please visit the Animating Archives website by clicking this link here.

The Art of Captioning - British Art Network Research Grant

The Art of Captioning is a research group, supported by British Art Network, that explores what creative captioning can bring to art while advancing vital work around access, equality and inclusivity in the sector.

By becoming a member of The Art of Captioning research group, you will have access to regular e-bulletin's from the group organisers, sharing information about forthecoming events, ongoing research and online resources.  

To become a member of the group and receive regular updates, please sign up to the Mailchimp here. 

To find out more about British Art Network and further research groups please click here.

The Art of Captioning is co-led by Hannah Wallis (Artist and Curator; Assistant Curator, Wysing Arts Centre) and Sarah Hayden (Associate Professor in Literature and Culture, University of Southampton, AHRC Innovation Fellow: Voices in the Gallery).

The research builds on Wallis and Hayden’s programme, Caption-Conscious Ecology, at Nottingham Contemporary. You can find out more about Caption-Conscious Ecology here.

Image Credit: Seo Hye Lee, [sound of subtitles], 2021, Courtesy of Bexley Local Studies & Archive Centre and London’s Screen Archives 

Version by Ain Bailey

12 July to 22 August 2021
Open daily, 12–5pm

Sound artist and DJ Ain Bailey presents a series of new works for Version, the first onsite exhibition at Wysing Arts Centre of 2021.

Sound artist and DJ Ain Bailey presents a series of new works for Version, the first onsite exhibition at Wysing Arts Centre of 2021. Installed in three parts across Wysing’s site, the title pays tribute to the ‘version’ of a vocal reggae track. Throughout the exhibition, Bailey brings together sound and sculpture as means to expand on ideas and techniques of ‘sonic biography’, a generative methodology of sound exploration that the artist has finessed over the years. Presented with the opportunity to occupy several spaces across the site, Bailey has produced a series of works that reflect on the artist’s Jamaican heritage, albeit from the position of someone who has not yet visited the island. A rendition of “Linstead Market”, a traditional Jamaican folk song, sung by artist and composer Elaine Mitchener plays intermittently throughout reception upon arriving, a nod to songs held in memory and childhood. Moving through to the main gallery, an installation, including a sound composition capturing the cooking of a traditional Jamaican dish, ackee and saltfish, is accompanied by sculptures, exploring the interconnected roles of sound and food in forming biography. For the third and final part of the exhibition, Bailey has transformed Folke Kobberling and Martin Kaltwasser’s Amphis sculpture in the Wysing grounds into an homage to dub, the music genre which originated on the island.

The three sound pieces will be accompanied by a translation, written by artist and writer Taylor Le Melle. Presented alongside the sound works as a textual ‘version’ of the compositions, these act as an experiment in sound translation, whereby sonic components are shared in alternative ways. This element is developed in partnership with exhibition curator Hannah Wallis, as part of an exploration of how sound works can be made more accessible for D/deaf audiences.  

Ain Bailey’s exhibition is generously supported by Arts Council England, DASH and The Future Curators' Programme, The Henry Moore Foundation and The Elephant Trust.

With special thanks to Martha Todd from Studio1Ceramics.

Access Information 
Sound works in the exhibition are available in experimental textual forms. 

The outdoor grounds at Wysing are uneven and have varying surface textures, which may cause some difficulty for unaccompanied wheelchair users.  

The work in Amphis is also available to view in the Open Studio, as Amphis is not wheelchair accessible.

Accessible parking and toilets are available.

If you have other access requirements that you would like to check with us before booking, please get in touch with Ceri Littlechild, Wysing’s Head of Operations, at ceri.littlechild@wysingartscentre.org and we will be happy to help.

For more info please click here: http://www.wysingartscentre.org/archive/exhibitions/ain_bailey_version/2021

Wysing Open Studios

Online July 14 – August 16 2020

Wysing Open Studios 2020 brings together Wysing’s studio and associate artists to share their practices. This year we host Open Studios online to provide a platform for the artists to share how their studio practices have changed during 2020 so far and the recent months of lockdown.

I have been working with the Wysing studio artists to bring together an online programme of talks, performances and digital works; and will be moderating two panel discussions around how studio practices might have changed in light of the recent global health crises.

Wysing Open Studios 2020: Studio Artists Panel Discussion (Part 1)
22 July, 5–6pm

With Damaris Athene, Lawrence Epps and Soheila Sokhanvari.

Wysing Open Studios 2020: Studio Artists Panel Discussion (Part 2)
5 August, 5–6pm

With Emanuela Cusin, Robert Foster, Bettina Furneé and Lucy Steggals

More information about how to attend and further events can be found here.

Wysing Broadcasts

R22 by Catalina Barroso-Luque & Ferronia Wennborg

So happy to be working with the Wysing team on the new Wysing Broadcasts site.

Loved working with Catalina Barroso-Luque & Ferronia Wennborg and with Abi Palmer on micro-commissions for the site. And am continuting to contribute to research threads around ‘Radical Broadcasting’ and monthly round-ups within the Wysing Team. More to come.

Interview whilst in lockdown with my good friend Tom Little for his new research-led publishing platform, Etwia Press.

Read here.

Garota Hacker created by ZU-UK & La da Favelinha

UK version presented at Cabot Circus, Bristol with Creative Youth Network

Supported by Co-Creating Change and British Council

independent evaluation by Hannah Wallis

Selected as Curator-in-Residence at Wysing Arts Centre, and as Curatorial Assistant

For more info on the residency visit the DASH and Wysing websites.

Royal Society of Arts Panel with ZU-UK, March 2020

Human Rights in the World of Fashion & Textiles

For info visit here.