[accessibleimage] Fw: BlindNews: Closing your eyes to art may help you to see

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Leon Gilbert" <BlindNews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Blind News Mailing List" <BlindNews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 8:12 PM
Subject: BlindNews: Closing your eyes to art may help you to see


> Highbury & Islington Express (London, UK)
> Friday, March 04, 2005
>
> Closing your eyes to art may help you to see
>
> By Alison Oldham editorial@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Distracted: Watch the Tree is a dramatic 3-D paper installation in which 
> Rachel Duerdan aims to convey a snapshot of what it feels like to be 
> visually impaired. In explaining why she offered it as an exhibit for the 
> Sense & Sensuality show at the Royal College of Art she said: "'Watch the 
> tree' were the exact words of a group of teenagers on the other side of 
> the street when I was walking with my symbol cane. As I have some sight I 
> could see that there was no tree ahead and knew that they were trying to 
> distract me. This piece represents to me some of the day-to-day dangers I 
> have experienced. To end on a positive note, I held my head up high."
>
> Rachel Duerdan is one of 60 finalists of a competition run by BlindArt, a 
> charity founded recently to celebrate art for and by the visually 
> impaired. There is a £5,000 prize and one work will be purchased to start 
> the BlindArt Collection, which will eventually tour the world.
>
> Blind, visually impaired and sighted artists have been equal contenders in 
> the competition to create works of art accessible whatever the viewer's 
> visual status and there is no indication in the exhibition whether the 
> artist is sighted or otherwise. Access to the work is offered through 
> audio-description and touch. Measures to widen involvement include Braille 
> signage and specially designed plinths for sculpture allowing wheelchair 
> users to have a thorough tactile experience of the work. At least one 
> installation is deliberately scented - a woven abstract tunnel with a 
> satin structure, inspired by the Eden Project. The more you touch it, the 
> more it smells.
>
> Of the 2D works, I am intrigued by Tim Holden's acrylic Midnight in a 
> Perfect World, which seems to simulate what a visually impaired person 
> would experience when looking into a light source. He has layered three 
> primary printing colours and white on aluminium to create opalescent 
> illusions of depth - a hallucinatory and other worldly effect.
>
> Several local artists are included in a variety of art forms. Everest for 
> All is a bronze and resin relief by Loz Simpson, who lives in Crouch End. 
> Frances Aviva Blane, who lives in Hampstead, has exhibited Mirror, an 
> aggressive self-portrait in dark glasses and scarlet lipstick. I described 
> this previously in reviewing her impressive exhibition in a semi-derelict 
> warehouse in Spitalfields last summer. Somewhat alarmingly, she says: "The 
> texture, vibrancy and use of my paint in my self-portraits describe not 
> only my appearance but also my personality."
>
> Pnina Shinbourne of Kilburn uses thread to create a tactile drawing 
> entitled I Am Whatever You Want Me To Be. The raised repetitive stitches 
> puncturing the paper serve to guide fingers along the "drawn" lines. She 
> believes the technique resembles Braille because it represents complexity 
> through basic marks.
>
> Sonic Cube by Alex Worster, of Golders Green, is one of two audio works 
> included in the exhibition, which opened on Wednesday. Pippa Roberts, who 
> is promoting it for BlindArt, recommends taking plenty of time to listen 
> to the narration. A different scenario is elicited by each turn of the 
> cube and each audio "picture" lasts about five minutes.
>
> In one, the listener is asked to envisage a room with a column of air in a 
> tube up its centre and to imagine the air, with a life of its own, rising 
> up through ducts in the roof into a sky where white clouds float. I am 
> told that the enunciation is clear but, as a hard-of-hearing person, I'll 
> be disappointed if there's no transcript on this occasion for an 
> adventurous imaginary conceptual art work in an exhibition that makes 
> accessibility its keynote.
>
> o Sense & Sensuality is in the Henry Moore Gallery at the RCA, Kensington 
> Gore, SW7, today, tomorrow and Sunday from 10am-5pm and Monday 10am-3pm. 
> There will be a British Sign Language presentation on Sunday at 3pm. All 
> works are for sale for charity. Entrance is free. For more information 
> phone 020-7245 9977.
>
>
> http://www.islingtonexpress.co.uk/content/islington/highandi/whatson/story.aspx?brand=NorthLondon24&category=whatsonart&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=whatson&itemid=WeED04%20Mar%202005%2012%3A55%3A04%3A003
>
>
>
>
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