This pilot edition, guest-edited by artist Aaron Williamson, invites leading artists, academics and curators to consider the notion of ‘disability arts’. Entitled In the Ghetto, it assesses the difficulties and politics of this terrain.
Williamson says: ‘In the UK, the same small group of disability artists show work relating to their familiar experiences without receiving much outside critical debate or appreciation. This is the disability art ghetto. This edition of Parallel Lines does not question the value of disability as a lived experience, but instead asks whether it is possible to discuss the quality of disability art.’
Parallel Lines is produced by the London Access and Diversity Peer Learning Network and is supported and initiated by Arts Council England.
Contributors
– Dr Aaron Williamson, Artist and Guest Editor
– Dr Colin Cameron, Northumbria University
– Professor Lennard J. Davis, University of Illinois at Chicago
– Ine Gevers, Curator, Writer and Activist
– Joseph Grigely, Artist and Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
– Georgina Kleege, Writer, University of California, Berkeley
– Juliet Robson, Artist
– Yinka Shonibare MBE, Artist
Parallel Lines is produced by the London Access and Diversity Peer Learning Network and is supported and initiated by Arts Council England. The Access and Diversity Peer Learning Network brought together senior representatives from Arts Council England’s regularly funded visual arts and architecture organisations to share experiences, discuss issues with their peers, and find collective solutions to common needs. The Network explored how these organisations could work together to identify and implement new ideas and best practice in issues of access and diversity.
Facilitated by the Serpentine Gallery, members of the network included representatives from: Acme Studios; Action Space; Architecture Foundation; Art in the open / An Open House resource; Artangel; Artquest; The Arts Catalyst; Camden Arts Centre; Chisenhale Gallery; Cubitt; Emergency Exit Arts; Engage; Four Corners; ICA; Iniva; Live Art Development Agency; London Print Studio; London Printmakers; Motiroti; New Work Network; no.w.here; Open House; Paddington Arts; The Photographer’s Gallery; Royal College of Art; SHAPE; South London Gallery; Space Studios; Triangle Arts Trust / Gasworks; VocalEyes and Whitechapel Gallery.
