Visual Arts commissioning

At a time when disabled artists are facing additional and ongoing barriers to work, Disability Arts Online and Attenborough Arts Centre want to support those who are at risk of being unable to access vital resources and networks. Commencing in February and running through to June 2021, the programme will support artists to access the development, materials and resources they need to sustain their practice during the continuing effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

We will send you a pack of postcards in advance of TDOV (31^st March), featuring brand new, empowering artworks by Soofiya, Terr and Henry Dow, to send to a friend or keep for yourself. You will also receive a blank postcard template and access to creative tutorial by Soofiya to get you started creating your own TDOV postcard design. We’ll be sharing your creations through an online gallery and using #TDOVpostcards. Despite the isolating circumstances of the past year, we hope this will be an opportunity to feel connected to a bigger community, and to take some reflective creative time this Trans Day of Visibility.

Anya uses her practice to produce works that can be considered forms of art activism. She uses cultural, psychological, and theoretical techniques to influence certain emotions to encourage the audience to start discussions and share their own experiences in relation to the subject portrayed.  

Anya’s commission is supporting her development of a new installation piece that will explore the way the Covid-19 pandemic and societies response has affected people living with disabilities. As Anya is a disabled artist herself, she has experienced first hand the biases in the governments response, and negativity against disabled and immune compromised people found on social media. She hopes to highlight these challenges and difficulties to educate and inform in a way that invites people to ask questions and get involved.

To see more of Anya’s work, click here.

Bowler uses sculpture and performance to subvert these practices in his own practice as well as creating space to showcase and support other queer and trans artists in Yonder – a residency programme and project space based in their own house and in the remote location of Slaithwaite. It offers a safe space to work as well as a retreat into nature.

This commission supports Bowler’s most recent work,  focused around the isolation of lockdown paired with the physical transition of their body: the lead up to surgeries and the violence of the (stalled) wait involved under the diminished funding and care of the NHS.  

To see more of Claye’s work, click here.

To see more of Loz’s work, click here.

We have commissioned Yambe to further develop her recent installation at Barbican Arts Trust, ‘Musica Universalis’, for a solo exhibition at Attenborough Arts Centre in 2021

To see more of Yambe’s Musica Universalis, click here. 

Kathryn’s practice grew out of an interest in the organising of information and systems, and often has a participatory element that creates space for dialogue and meaningful interaction with the audience. She has an ongoing focus on mental health and mental distress in her work, and the systems and circumstances (often bureaucratic and institutional) in which people lose their ability to trust instinctive knowledge.

Kathryn is developing a new body of work based on small sculptures that she made during a brief period of art psychotherapy in 2009 – as the patient. These little clay fragments have an enigmatic quality, something to do with self preservation, creating defences between oneself and the other, self soothing and the creation externally of some psychological parts. Beginning with these small fragments, Kathryn will explore relationships between beings – thinking in particular about object relations theory (a psychoanalytic theory – a development of Freudian theories) and the act of going to therapy.

To see more of Kathryn’s work, click here.

Tim’s commission was to support him through the final stages of developing and filming his work ‘Cowboys Invaded’ which tells the story of aliens conquering the American West. This work is part of a strand of Tim’s practice that is concerned with the stories and politics of the Western genre of film, particularly the idea of Manifest Destiny.

Tim will be presenting his completed commission at Attenborough Arts Centre in January 2021.

To see more of Tim’s work, click here.

No Jobs In The Aarts (NJITA) showcases the work of early career artists in the region using a zine format which is printed and distributed for free around galleries across the East Midlands.

We commissioned NJITA to produce a new edition of their zine focused on platforming the work of early career artists in the region who have a disability or otherwise face barriers to their practice.

You can access the digital zine here.  A limited print run will be produced to coincide with Leicester Art Week, 20-29 November 2020