Cripping it up

ABSTRACT/STATEMENT

When I wrote my artist statement for ‘Exposed’ all those years ago, I had come from the Disability Arts scene, political, radical, sometimes almost separatist, and I coated myself in a layer of anger. It was a good time, where I was allowed to develop my skills in a supportive, understanding and invigorating way, within the safe confines of like-minded and politically Disabled people, but it also meant that when I came into more mainstream, i.e., non-disabled, arts, I was defensive in my refusal to be labelled by traditionally disablist cultural understanding, and therefore spiky, sometimes obstreperous. Although it gave me the energy and focus to create a lot of my early work, I also sometimes missed my mark, or rather, failed to get the optimum interface with my intended audience/s.

However, this was for me better than suffering and continuing to be a passive victim of the misunderstanding of what was then an almost 100 per cent non-disabled arts scene, a time where most disabled artists were just considered to be doing their own therapy rather than it being seen as valid art, and indeed one where many non-disabled artists, looking for shock, had found disability as one of the last taboos to use.

In their often surface level use of this imagery we, Disability Artists, sometimes felt, for right or for wrong, that they were hijacking some of what we thought of as our territory, which was one of the reasons I actually entered into the fray of mainstream arts, to begin to put a more authoritative stamp on work around disability imaging and discussions. To the credit of Lois Keidan & the Live Art Development Agency, Manuel Vason, Marisa Carnesky, Laura Godfrey Isaacs and notable others, I was offered a space to be, to further discover my own work practices, and even begin to flourish in the Live Art scene of London's early Noughties.

My practice has often been to use my own body as an intervention in Society's misconceived and clichéd perceptions of Disability, especially of the identity imaging of Disability. Paul Darke said, and I agree, that media imaging of disability is the sole defining cultural aspect that shapes people's perceptions of Disabled people.

KEYWORDS:

• performance
• body
• theatrical