Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Arts & Disability Ireland is
The national development and resource organisation
For arts and disability in Ireland.
That sounds very grand and very big,
But we are a tiny organisation.
So, we're a national organisation
Covering 26 counties,
34 local authorities,
A myriad of art forms
And we cross across all disabilities
And impairment groups.
Fire Station Artists' Studios
Has been around for 20 years
Supporting professional visual artists.
It wasn't until our partnership with
Arts & Disability Ireland that we really felt
We could have an effective strategy
Around how we could support artists with disabilities
And for us the most important part is
The artist and the art.
This symposium is an opportunity
For ADI and Fire Station
To share the learning from our partnership
Over the past six years and specifically
The learning from the
'Studio Award for an Artist with a Disability'
That we ran from 2008 until 2012.
It's also an opportunity
To broaden the debate around curatorial practice,
In particular fostering links
Between curators and artists with disabilities.
The residency was a really exciting opportunity
To have some, physically and mentally, clutter free time
To think through ideas and develop them.
It also gave me the opportunity
To develop a very large scale performative piece,
Which I probably wouldn't have made
Without the facilities at the Fire Station.
This is called
'We Are For You Because We Are Against Them'
It was a dinner party for eight guests
And each of the guests were sitting in a Weeble.
Essentially Weebles are little toys,
Sort of from the 70's,
American things that go with the phrase
'Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down'
So in the wonderful workshop at the Fire Station
I made human sized Weebles
with 70 kilos of concrete in the bottom.
I'm Anna Berndtson,
I'm a performance artist.
I was at the Fire Station Artists' Studio
And Arts & Disability Ireland residency
In 2010 leaving in January 2011.
The time I had there was really productive for me,
I did so much work
And I had so much support through the programme.
Then I used this idea of these
Kinds of hallucinations that I have in my work.
So I'm taking this kind of frame,
Through framing this tree with aluminium foil
And also creating a frame around this landscape.
Also of course using many other ideas
Behind the video but it originated
Out of the idea of kind of
Framing the landscape with this aluminium.
I think I arrived in Fire Station
Quite discombobulated within my practice
And wasn't quite sure where I wanted to go
And to be allowed to have the time and space and freedom
To play and work and research and figure out
Where I wanted to go was
The most beneficial thing that I got from it.
I was intrigued by this idea of water memory.
That water could hold the memory of substance
That had passed through it
Or something that had been immersed in it.
And I became quite intrigued by
The emotional content of a tear.
So I began to collect tears from myself
And from the public and conducted
Various experiments with them.
My experience of Fire Station was very good,
It was very positive.
I felt extremely well looked after by all the team,
The staffs were very professional and lovely people.
In terms of how it's enhanced my practice
I suppose it's given me more confidence
In pursuing other residencies.
It also teased out some aspects of my work
Such as drawing and drawing informs my performative practice.
It's called 'Sexy Lawn Mower Series'
which is a kind of working title.
I was thinking about women lying over Ferraris
And Porsches and stuff like that,
For like men's magazines and things like that.
So we now,
Both in language terms and in understanding
Intellectually and physically the resources that we have,
You know, that we can very effectively
And positively support artists with disabilities,
Just like we support all artists.
And I think what we really learned,
The both of us that sharing
Our expertise was the valuable element.
The only effective way
For a small organisation of
Three staff to work is,
In partnership with other organisations.
And I think to date the Fire Station Artists' Studio Award,
The ADI Fire Station Studio Award
Has been one of our more successful partnerships
Because they have an expertise in running a studio practice
Or studios
And we have an interest, expertise, advocacy role
In the area of arts and disability.
Putting those two together
We have worked hard to I suppose,
Make the proposition of an artist with a disability
Taking up a residency at
The Fire Station something
That can happen off into the future.