Disability Arts History Australia

Items

• “Arts Access Australia launches its ‘Don’t Play Us, Pay Us’ campaign in response to 'cripping up'”
  In 2012, Arts Access Australia launched its ‘Don’t Play Us, Pay Us’ campaign in response to 'cripping up,' where non-disabled performers play disabled characters on stage or screen.
• “Bus Stop Films begins operation in 2009”
  Bus Stop Films began operations in 2009. In their own words, they “educate, create and advocate.” Their primary focus is teaching filmmaking to disabled adults, but they also offer workshops to others of marginalised identities. Bus Stop “makes films with, for and about people from diverse backgrounds and abilities.” Their website lists support workers in every Australian state and territory.
• ”Bree Hadley, Janice Rieger, Sarah Barron, Sarah Boulton, Catherine Parker (2023) Codesigning Access: A New Approach to Cultures of Inclusion in Museums and Galleries. In Cachia, Amanda (Ed.) Curating Access: Disability Art Activism and Creative Accommodation. Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon, pp. 183-195.”
  "In museums and galleries, access is often designed and implemented by staff and informed by regulations and guidelines. Codesign approaches have the potential to shift this understanding away from designing access “for” visitors and toward access as a creative process developed “with” visitors. This chapter focuses on the exhibition and practice-led research project Vis-ability: Artworks from the QUT Art Collection, which was presented at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Art Museum in Australia in 2019. Vis-ability represented the culmination of five years of international research into access in museums and galleries for visitors who are blind or have low vision."
• "Bree Hadley (2021) Ex/centric Fixations Project (theatrical play). In Sefel, John Michael, Slamcik Lassetter, Amanda, & Summerville, Jill (Eds.) At the Intersection of Disability and Drama: A Critical Anthology of New Plays. McFarland Publishers, Jefferson, USA, pp. 317-344.”
  "The Ex/Centric Fixations Project is a postdramatic performance work which renders the feeling of otherness visceral for spectators, without anchoring it any specific singlular experience of otherness, with the text unfolding with the musical flow and rhythm of a fugue state."
• "Bree Hadley (2021) What's in a name? The politics of labeling in disability performance. In Rai, Shirin, Gluhovic, Milija, Jestrovic, Silvija, & Saward, Michael (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Politics and Performance. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, pp. 531-543.”
• "Janice Rieger and Megan Strickfaden(2019) “Dis/ordered assemblages of disability in museums.” In The Routledge Handbook of Disability Art, Culture, and Media, edited by Bree Hadley and Donna McDonald, 48–61. London & New York: Routledge."
  "Museums are spaces of power and care. They are institutions that present assemblages (Deleuze & Guattari 2002), which are reconstructions and representations of history and societal values, and thus are partial realities that curate human existence. These assemblages cannot ever represent the totality of human existence because it is never possible to do so, and yet these assemblages are embedded with power because choices are made about what ought or ought not be represented within museums (Ott 2013; Bennet 2017). The nature of partial realities is that, at their centre, these are still representations that tell stories of what one would imagine to be the most significant events related to a place (nation, city), with a particular focus on a societal event or issue (war, art, sports, nature, human rights, etc.) and peoples (e.g. immigrants, migrants, First Nations or Indigenous peoples, etc.). Persons attending museums rely on the expertise of historians, curators, archivists, conservators, and exhibition designers to present materials within the museum that focus upon and represent societal values. Most museum visitors are not aware of the power that museums hold, although more and more museum visitors push against narratives which they do not feel to be adequate representations of the places, events, issues, and peoples of society (Hooper-Greenhill 1992, 2000; Anderson 2004; Janes 2009, 2010). Where there is power, there is also care. Historians, curators, archivists, conservators, and exhibition designers take great care in how they assemble materials within museums."
• "Liz Ferrier (2000) Vulnerable Bodies: Creative Disabilities in Contemporary Australian Film. In Ian Craven ed. Australian Cinema in the 1990s. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203045022"
  Reads, in part "The internationally-acclaimed film Shine is one of a number of contemporary Australian movies which portray embattled artists or performers. Reminiscent of earlier works such as Starstruck (1982), Man of Flowers (1983), Malcolm (1986) and Sweetie (1989), and several more recent productions – Proof (1991), Strictly Ballroom (1992), Bad Boy Bubby (1994), The Adventures of Priscilia, Queen of The Desert (1994), Muriel's Wedding (1994), Cosi (1996), Lilian's Story (1996), and Jane Campion's New Zealand/Australian films, An Angel at My Table (1990) and The Piano (1993) – it depicts a disadvantaged individual overcoming setbacks through the passionate and eccentric expression of his creativity. The film and the cycle to which it belongs offers a peculiar vantage point from which to examine the problems and possibilities of Australian cinema in the 1990s."
• "Sally Northfield (2014) Canvassing the Emotions: Women, Creativity and Mental Health in Context" PhD Thesis Victoria University, Melbourne,  https://vuir.vu.edu.au/29985/, Australia, https://vuir.vu.edu.au/29985/1/NORTHFIELD%20Sally-thesis_nosignature.pdf "
  Reads, in part, "A multimedia movement-theatre show, incorporating dance, video- and slide- projections, a life-sized puppet and an original soundtrack. A diary come to life, portraying the true story of an Australian dancer who – after paralysing one of his arms in a motorcycle accident – journeys through the worlds of medicine, rehabilitation and disability, in recovery of self-expression. He finds new angles on perceiving the body, and new ways to move. "Body image" and concepts of "normality" are questioned."
• Archibald Prize
• Australian Society of Authors
• Bus Stop Films
• Shock of the New Festival
• Dark Mofo
• QUT Art Museum
• Murmuration Dance Theatre
• Big hART
• Gayle Kennedy
• Alun Leach-Jones
• Anne Graham
• Bec Stephens
• Bob McMullin
• Colin Lanceley
• Dale Frank
• David Urquhart
• Donna McDonald