Freewheeling
Freewheeling – Traces From a Wheelchair is an exploration into issues about the public preconceptions of the wheelchair user and Austin’s personal experience of freedom in the use of the power wheelchair.
‘I have used this practice to research ways in which I might open up a narrative based around the sense of agency, freedom and expansion engendered by the experience of using my power wheelchair so that it challenges the assumptions of limitation, restriction, dependence and pity associated with wheelchairs. Other dynamics which became apparent within the work were issues about support/constriction, fragmentation/unity, presence/absence and the prosthetic extension of the body. I am also interested in the concept of liminality, the use of art for catharsis, subjectivism and expressions of self and ideas explored by Juan Munoz around ‘otherness’ – where themes of alienation and ambiguity seemed to dominate.’
Susan Austin, December 2007
Austin, a Devon based disabled artist, was the Judges’ Choice winner of the 2008 Holton Lee Disability Arts Open. The results of her week-long residency prize forms the majority of work in the exhibition with installations both in the gallery and outside in the landscape.
In the gallery, Austin will paint with her wheelchair to create wall hung canvasses for the exhibition. Documentation of the process is important and becomes part of the artwork, ideas for presenting video and photography on the web are being explored.
Her work in the two Holton Lee Disability Arts Open exhibitions has been very well received both critically and publicly and deserves to gain widespread attention because of the quality of the ideas and execution. The themes that underlie her artistic practice are current within Disability culture and mainstream contemporary art curation. She represents the wave of artists new to Disability Arts movement exploring identity as a disabled person living in the 21st century, post DDA, and as one of the first Disabled artists to actually be able to place her work in a historical context in terms of Disability Arts. The academic and theoretical discourse will be presented in the gallery entrance as a working studio space.
As part of the residency Susan aims to collaborate with guests staying on site in the short-stay residential accommodation to create photographic works tracing movement using wheelchairs. These will be recorded as light trails and presented as part of her developmental work in the gallery and online.