| Grapple – a recollection
The following words are about
the beginnings of Grapple and its first project staged at Pinnacles Gallery
in 1998.
Historically, people with
a disability have been non–gallery visitors and non–participants in the
visual arts in Australia. In a regional environment where fewer people
equate with fewer facilities, the needs of people with disabilities are
irregularly met. In a regional area art and non–art community networks
are more readily connected. In 1998 the Townsville and Thuringowa community
of vision impaired people and advocacy groups, in conjunction with Pinnacles
Gallery, implemented a series of workshops resulting in an exhibition of
artworks that relied on senses other than sight.
Art galleries not only assume
the ability to see, but their business is to present some of the most developed
and sophisticated products for vision. In the last twenty years and particularly
over the past ten, contemporary arts practice has investigated other ways
of experiencing and interpreting art. In Grapple 1998, the usual art practice
of the artists utilised senses other than sight. Each artist worked
in small collaborative teams with people with vision impairment. Marion
Gaemers and her collaborators created a series of screens which utilised
skills such as weaving and bead–making with a variety of natural, found
or recycled materials, to explore notions of space. Liz Woods and company
created Smelling Cups which involved pickled and preserved foods, sheets
of braille script and fruit leather sheets. This work utilised the senses
of taste, smell and touch and resulted from seemingly simple aspects of
everyday life. The video and sound work by New Zealand artist Yuk King
Tan was based on communication with collaborators. The work presented differing
levels of vision and the issues between labels of “sighted” and “non sighted”.
Lynn Scott Cummings and her collaborators created a tactile environment
inspired by the sea, its myths and inhabitants.
Grapple 1998 included education
and public programs: audio catalogue, education kit, sensory trail activity,
video sessions, artists’ and collaborators’ talks. In addition to the scheduled
programs, visitors could tour the exhibition using vision altering devices
or audio catalogue.
There are many ways
of developing exhibitions. The inclusive development and community committee
management of Grapple 1998 was a fundamental aim of the exhibition. The
inclusion of people outside the industry in the decision making of exhibitions
is one method whose time has clearly arrived.
The core Grapple 1998 group
continued to meet at Pinnacles Gallery and in their homes to create artworks
for public display and initiated a community exhibition entitled Feastival
in 1999. Since the staging of Grapple in 1998, Pinnacles Gallery has developed
other exhibitions that particularly involve people with a disability such
as Artability and Visability and the contemporary 2002 Grapple.
For support and wisdom during
Grapple 1998 many thanks to Lyn Tyson, the Grapple committee, Jacquelyn
Murphy, Candace Miles, Bill Perrier, Neal Price and Access Arts, Guide
Dogs for the Blind, Royal Blind Foundation, Umbrella Studio, RADF and Arts
Queensland.
Allison Gray
Museum and Art Gallery of
the Northern Territory, July 2002
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