The Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary at Ten by Shape Arts

‘Adam was inspirational as an artist and a man. This bursary is the most practical and powerful way to continue doing what Adam did to make the possible palpable.’ — Sir Antony Gormley RA

This publication celebrates the ten year anniversary of Shape Artsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary (ARMB), an arts award set up in memory of the life and work of sculptor Adam Reynolds. The annual award offers mid-career disabled artists funds and an accompanying three month residency at high profile arts venues across the UK. It provides the time, space and support for artists to develop their ideas and practice without pressure to deliver a particular outcome such as finished or exhibition-ready work. Within this publication, we have used these three themes as a starting point for conversations between arts professionals and ARMB alumni artists, with contributions from those who knew and worked with Adam. Shape Arts would like to express our thanks to the friends and family of Adam who were instrumental in setting up this award, and the galleries which continue to host and support it.

â&#x2020;?

Adam Reynolds c.1983

Foreword

Tony Heaton OBE Shape Chair 2017-ongoing, Shape CEO, 2008-17

I was very fortunate to know Adam Reynolds, as a fellow artist and a friend; in fact it was his work that convinced me to show my own work within a disability arts context. In 1990, we were both invited to exhibit in ‘Out of Ourselves’, possibly the first group show of disabled artists, organised by LDAF, the London Disability Arts Forum and held at the Diorama Gallery in Regent’s Park. I saw Adam’s ‘Lead Suitcase’ for the first time, a powerful piece of sculpture, and I knew I had made the right decision to show my own work there.

I liked him immediately. We kept in touch and when I became Director of Holton Lee, in Dorset in 1997, I invited him down. I later commissioned him to make a way marker in the grounds of the estate, and he showed in DA21, the Disability Arts and Culture Conference I organised there in 2002, exhibiting two works: ‘Temptation’ and ‘Sword of Damocles’. He pledged them both to the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive (NDACA), a project I had founded and which is currently being realised by Shape Arts – and they remained on display in the Farmhouse and Faith House Gallery respectively throughout my tenure at Holton Lee. Adam said of them in the catalogue:

‘These pieces are very simple. They refer to myths from classical Greece, of Pandora and Damocles, and so use marble, which together with bronze was established as the only serious sculptor’s medium. In this case though, the marble is not a pale condensed limestone, but a round glass child’s toy. This subversion changes everything and allows a whole new layer of meaning…’ Adam also gave an artist’s presentation, where he talked about there being a disability element in every piece he made, and ‘...being driven by a desire to get people interested in your ideas, and I include in that disability. It’s been the single most important factor in allowing me to step aside and get around the dominance of the way that our culture brings us up.’

I was privileged to be asked to speak at Adam’s memorial service, and when I took on the role of CEO at Shape in 2008 I knew the most important thing I could do in those early days was to ensure that the ARMB was not just a ‘one off’ event as planned. We had to raise the money to make it an annual event. I also wanted to take it around the country, to give disabled artists something to aim for in their locality. It’s been reaffirming to have had such significant contemporary art galleries from all across England wanting to work with us, to perpetuate Adam’s name, to promote the importance of the Bursary and to attract such interesting artists. Long may that continue.

He finished by saying ‘...there are always echoes of my experience present; I don’t mind if nobody ever reads them, but if I can’t read them then I know there’s something wrong with that piece of work. If I can’t see that particular perspective of my life in work I make, I know I am lying and if I make a work that’s not telling the truth what am I bothering for? So from that perspective, all of my work’s got something to do with disability and my disability.’

overleaf: (left to right) Sally Booth, Carmen Papalia, Aaron McPeake, Tony Heaton, Aaron Williamson (2016) Photo: Rachel Cherry

Time Noëmi Lakmaier in conversation with Jenni Lomax OBE

Jenni Lomax I have been thinking of Adam and you know he used to have a gallery – ‘Adam Gallery’? He always described it as: ‘if an artist had been painting cats but really wanted to paint dogs then the Adam Gallery would be the place to start painting dogs.’ People showed work or made work that marked a change from what they were doing before and we wanted to have that ethos when we started the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary and residency. When we saw your work and your proposal we thought that really fitted with this. Noëmi Lakmaier I don’t remember my proposal at all, but I do remember getting the phone call – I nearly crashed my car. I was on the North Circular driving to my studio and someone from Shape called and I let go of the steering wheel and ended up in this soft verge!

← Noëmi Lakmaier (2008), ‘Experiment in Happiness’ Photo: Hannah Facey

So once you got over the shock and realised you hadn’t crashed the car… How did you set about thinking about this residency and how you might use the nine weeks in Camden Arts Centre’s studio? NL

Initially I didn’t give it much thought. I thought about it a lot but I didn’t think about what exactly I would be doing and I think that’s still how I work. I’m really rubbish at coming up with a packaged idea, it usually grows organically and I feel I have little influence over it. The residency suited that personality to a ‘T’ – to just go in and experiment and see where it goes.

I wonder whether there was anything in the focus of having nine weeks, knowing that that was a finite period of time? While there wasn’t a big pressure to actually come up with a finished thing, it was up to you what you did with what time you had. NL

I put all the pressure on myself and I wanted an outcome – that was important to me. But that’s really interesting what you were saying about the time being finite and in that finality was some of its productiveness. I was just reading a piece about Time Limited Therapy and what the possible benefits could be. Having the ending implicit adds value to the work and maybe there is a parallel there.

So did the idea of ‘Experiment in Happiness’ come about from just playing with ideas and experimenting with things in the studio? NL

I know exactly how it came about and it’s going to sound absolutely crazy… I started my first week and I was really frustrated with myself; I didn’t know what to do. I thought, ‘Oh God, I’m going to waste all this time’, and put a massive amount of pressure on myself. Then one weekend, I went to see a friend in Brighton and I got a fever. I had this weird fever dream of being chased down one of the really steep hills in Brighton by a giant ball of yellow shoes. I felt better, drove to London and thought, ‘well now I know what I’m doing!’ From then on there was such a certainty that this was what I needed to do.

In my experience of residencies, not just at Camden Arts Centre but also at the British School at Rome, artists never felt that they had long enough, but if an artist had a longer-term residency of, say, two years, they often lost focus because it took away any sense of end point, transition or concentration. NL

I hadn’t thought about that before but I do think that was really valuable. It was also really sad and definitely didn’t feel long enough – I could have stayed there forever. How did you know Adam? JL

I first met Adam when I was working at Whitechapel Gallery. He was studying at Cass School of Art across the road, so I met him there. He decided he wanted to set up this gallery in Walcot Square, where he and his partner Isabelle lived, and he wanted advice and help.

I became involved from then on and, because he was a good artist, I invited him to undertake a residency at Camden Arts Centre in 1994. He was so intelligent and his interest in art was very broad. Quite a lot of artists showed at Adam Gallery – Tracey Emin at one point, Lucy Gunning, Daniel Sturgis and many more. Lots of other artists supported it: Antony Gormley, Rob Kesseler… It really was an experimental place, so when Adam died the idea of setting up something in his name that would carry on supporting artists and supporting innovation was really important. NL

It’s so wonderful to hear that. I don’t think I was aware of that at the time. I say this with some guilt, but I think I applied to it as an opportunity; I didn’t know its background or where it came from. JL

It would be great to see artists that have done the residency becoming… I mean, I don’t like the word ‘mainstream’, but if we start to see them in big, curated exhibitions and biennales. I think it’s more likely to happen having had [the ARMB] than not having had this. JL

I was interested to hear that you have worked on a new piece, ‘Cherophobia’, and that the seeds of that were sown during your residency at Camden Arts Centre. Thinking about our conversation about time and having a finite amount of time – it has expanded beyond the residency period.

Well yes – that’s as it should be! NL

What was nice about the residency too was that it sat very much within the exhibition curatorial programme rather than education and outreach. My experience, certainly at the time, was that if galleries wanted to work with disabled artists they would always be slotted into the education and outreach programme. I think that’s still the case sometimes. JL

One of the things that would be wonderful as an outcome of the award: if institutions change that attitude.

Noëmi Lakmaier (2016) ‘Cherophobia’ Photo: Grace Gelder

It has. The idea definitely developed during the residency; it was fertile ground for a new idea to develop in a way that I think sometimes everyday life isn’t. I was very naïve at the time and thought, ‘well maybe I can realise ‘Cherophobia’ as well?’ in a space that would have been way too small, but the idea never left me and I knew I had to realise this. I took it in a lot of different directions but it always felt impossible – the space, the cost and the engineering behind it - and then Unlimited* came along and it suddenly became possible. Eight years after the residency, it came to fruition and it recently travelled to Sydney Opera House, * Unlimited is a commissioning programme for disabled so from Camden Arts artists, delivered by Shape Centre – the spark of an Arts and Artsadmin with funding from Arts Council idea – to an installation at Sydney Opera House. England, Arts Council of JL

So what happened there? Was it inside the Opera House?

The more I think about it I think the philosophy and existential side of my work has always been there and I think it is now starting to fall into place; I do find myself making connections. I was thinking about the value of something like the residency and the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary – it’s something outside of everyday life, at least for me anyway, and that opened up possibilities. In a way that’s what therapy is too: you go out of the everyday – a very specific limited, contained, boundaried space – and the residency offered that too. For me, it was especially out of the ordinary because it was my first major residency. I had been working in an employed capacity for a few years and by the time I was offered the residency I was really starting to hate my job, so having the residency gave me an opportunity to give that up; to do what I really wanted to do. It gave me enough financial support to say ‘I’ll take this risk’, take the plunge, become self-employed and take being an artist seriously. I might never have done that if I’d not had that opportunity.

Wales, British Council and Spirit of 2012.

Yes, it was inside the main concert hall. It was more or less the same piece as the one I did in Shoreditch in 2016, where I’m suspended for 48 hours under 20,000 helium balloons. This experiment of lifting my body with 20,000 helium balloons over a duration of 48 hours – it’s amazing how this developed over eight years. JL

It’s interesting that the other part of your intellectual space has been taken up with your course in psychotherapy. Do you see a point where that will all merge together?

So how long do you think the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary will continue to inform your work? NL

I think it has informed who I have become as an artist and how I work. It was a time of lots of realisations. Realising the process as the piece, which I think I hadn’t understood before and grew into during the residency – that the whole process of making is a performative event. That’s become increasingly important.

Your latest piece is inspired by ‘Sisyphus’, the piece Adam was due to perform.** That piece linked to Carl Andre’s Equivalent VIII – the idea of collecting washed-up bricks from the Thames mud at low tide, and the sense of Adam carrying these bricks up one at a time, like Sisyphus with his rock.

** Adam died two days before the performance was due to take place in 2005

I’m really interested in what Camus says about Sisyphus – he doesn’t so much talk about the act itself but focusses on the idea that we shouldn’t see Sisyphus as an unhappy man. What matters is the meaning and the task. I was aware Adam’s performance was going to happen. I wish I’d met Adam! JL

Well – his spirit lives on.

Noëmi Lakmaier was born in Vienna and studied at Winchester School of Art. She has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally including at Disabled by Normality, DOX, Prague, 2013, Object/Female, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton, 2011/2012, and We Are For You Because We Are Against Them, The LAB, Dublin, 2009. In 2008 she was awarded the inaugural Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary and was in residence at Camden Arts Centre, London, producing the sculptural piece ‘Experiment in Happiness’. Jenni Lomax OBE was the Director of Camden Arts Centre, London, from 1990-2017, where she established an influential and forward-thinking programme of international exhibitions, artists’ residencies and education projects, all of which have artists and their ideas at the core. She led the organisation through a major building refurbishment scheme which was completed in early 2004. Before Camden Arts Centre, Lomax developed and headed up the Community Education and Public Programmes at the Whitechapel Art Gallery during the 1980s. She was a member of the group of friends and family of Adam Reynolds that initially proposed the Bursary, launched with Noëmi Lakmaier at Camden Arts Centre in 2008.

overleaf: Sally Booth (2009) Studio windows photo-montage

Aaron Williamson (2010) performance at Spike Island Photo: Joe Maxwell

Caroline Cardus (2011) â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Message to Barbaraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

Space imon Raven in conversation S with Manick Govinda

Manick Govinda: You work with performance, with objects, and make installations. How does that process work? Is it something that is in your headspace initially, or are the sources of inspiration spontaneous? Is it conceptualised and then created? Simon Raven: The starting point is usually a language game for me. I enjoy playing with the language of things and imagining them differently, occasionally following through to making something. That process will usually reveal that the game is more complex and more self-reflexive, in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. That’s my process really. MG

As we know London is getting more expensive for artists to have a dedicated studio, and the dilemma of that is very sad and unfortunate. The organisation I’m moving onto, SPACE, was set up in 1968 by Bridget Riley, Peter Sedgley and Peter Townsend. At that time, in a sort of prescient way they thought that they wanted to develop an infrastructure for artists to have affordable workspaces in London. I don’t know how artists at that time would have thought London would be fifty years in the future. As we know now, it’s become a sort of glass cathedral.

←

Simon Raven (2010), ‘Death Dunce’

I think people are moving into a digital space. I think an enormous amount of cultural activity is occurring in a space that is not necessarily visible in the day to day and I find that fascinating.

It was the summer so the artist’s studio was a really warm space. I started really thinking about space, thinking about airflow, opening the window, opening the doors to create an airflow through the gallery. That became a seedbed for thinking about how I might position myself in the gallery, and open up my practice. My approach became very much about having the doors open so people could walk in and have this environment which was open; I was interacting with the people who were there. When the residency started there was a Bruce Lacey retrospective in the main galleries that Jeremy Deller had put together. It was fantastic to be able to respond to that. The conversations I was having with people who had just been to that exhibition – they were of a certain mind-set which was really enlivened. Bruce Lacey had a sort of effect on people which was a really generous one to work next to.

True. I think digital and virtual spaces are becoming the place where there is freedom but also where you can still engage with people. SR

And Adam Reynolds specifically – I think of his sculptural performance practice and the kind of space that evokes; a freedom, a sort of artistic freedom, but a material one. And that’s what is good about the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary – it’s an opportunity to make the unthinkable, something that could take place that wouldn’t otherwise. That is interesting for me conceptually… To consider what is unthinkable in terms of how you might approach space. MG

Tell us more about the residency that was attached to Camden Arts Centre, which is a beautiful gallery. You had a studio in a lovely Victorian building. SR

The artist studio space there is very generous, it’s right in the centre of the gallery. A lot of institutions say ‘it’s central to our organisation’ to do residencies but at Camden Arts Centre it really is central to it. There is not much of a dividing line between their different programmes of activity, including artist residencies. Camden Arts Centre’s approach enabled and shaped the way I work.

So the context of Camden Arts Centre and having Bruce Lacey’s exhibition running simultaneously inspired and fired off some interesting starting points for you? What I find fascinating when one is in a gallery space during a residency, as opposed to a rural space on a retreat residency – context always inspires what goes on. When you applied did you have a fixed idea of what you wanted to do or was it more open ended? SR

Well, I applied with a specific idea that was from a funny Slavoj Žižek observation that a lot of people used to go to see a psychiatrist because they felt they were repressed. It followed a certain Freudian logic, whereas nowadays people go to see psychiatrists because they don’t feel they are enjoying themselves enough.

They feel like they aren’t unrepressed enough. It’s a sort of negation of a negation. So the job of a psychiatrist now is not to try to help people to be relieved from their repressed nature, but to be relieved from the pressure to pursue their desires: it’s to say – ‘it’s ok not to desire, it’s ok to be boring’ basically. I thought that was a really funny and unusual observation to put in a gallery. My application was to set up a space where that was the invitation to the public; that you didn’t have to enjoy this work. Some people really responded to that. The initial idea was to set up a very flat waiting room for some boring bureaucratic procedural, and do a performance which was structured around boredom – but I thought probably doing that performance would be boring so I thought ‘OK – its ok to be boring, but I’m not going to be’ whilst still discussing that idea. The invitation to be boring was my route into not being boring in some respect, and I found that really useful. The nice thing about not having precisely done what I said I was going to do is that it’s still there to be imagined, and I think some things work really well remaining as a concept. MG

I think what’s wonderful about the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary is that it’s a bit of a luxury – for the equivalent space you’re talking about a cost of thousands of pounds. It’s amazing that you were afforded that space. SR

I think the sense of luxury is where the energy to be in the studio every hour that was available to me came from. That is just one way of approaching it though – the value of the residency is not economic.

Art’s value to the political is that it exceeds the boundaries of politics. I think that’s really important with Disability Arts – obviously there is a social ontology and it’s very important that representation for and by disabled people is supported and nurtured, but then also – art is not bounded by politics. Its main use value, its main concern, is not to be limited. I guess Unlimited and other projects really push that. It’s not identity politics writ large – it is art; it’s something that, through conjecture, pushes the bounds of things, in a way that identity politics actually tends to reproduce. Binaries are unhelpful. They can entrench positions, whereas I think art is one of the few things that tend to cross borders, boundaries. Imagination really is the key to thinking differently. That’s the focus of my PhD, how these two different approaches to disability – the social one and the imaginative – how that affects art, and the interplay between those positions. MG

The dilemma that art finds itself in is that a studio may no longer be a private space. I think more and more residencies call for constant engagement and transparency – having to bare open all your research process, which can be constraining at the same time – because the arts needs to have a social value of some kind. SR

Well, you are asked to do contradictory things. On the one hand you are asked to be social, ‘accessible’, but then also to fulfil a need to represent art at its most cutting edge – and those two things are not always compatible bedfellows.

Partly there is an argument to say that art shouldn’t really be anything but good art, and really if you pursue that to its end then I think that the different worldview or the different perspective that disabled artists might bring would be essential to that project anyway. It’s noticeable that many cities don’t have any provision to retain the artists who have been to their art schools. It’s very easy to set up a decent studio block, one in which you might be able to set down roots – that’s why the residency system is fantastic, in that you might be able to develop work in a context and in a place that you wouldn’t be able to otherwise. But then I think that also needs to be countered by studio provision that you can rely on, that’s affordable and that supports and nurtures artists. It should be considered apart from an economic model – not because artist studios aren’t going to contribute to the economy, but because they contribute to the culture of the city.

I think you just have to move. There is such a contrast between London and the rest of the country in terms of affordability. For me, moving to Nottingham, I was able to teach half of the week, afford a studio, afford to live fairly well and be able to travel to London and have the flexibility in my work to do residencies like the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary. Artists are adaptive and the main adaptation has been to this digital economy – this digital space that we are all occupying more and more – and I think one of the problems is that the public sphere is disappearing gradually or becoming privatised under our feet, under the rubric of regeneration. We all know that process. It’s quite refreshing to not be part of it.

I’m completely with you. I think the pricing out of affordable workspaces for artists in London is going to create what’s happened in New York – it just becomes a showroom, and artists no longer become part of the community or part of the neighbourhood. On one level I think it’s so important to be an everyday citizen in your community and area, but then to not be able to have a space to make your work? I go to work from 10 to 6 and artists cannot find a studio space to go off and withdraw in the privacy of that headspace and physical space.

Simon Raven (2012) Studio image Photo: Ben Roberts

Simon Raven (2012) ‘The BookWorm’

Next year celebrates the 50 year anniversary of the Situationists, and how they worked with public space as being a site of subversion and creativity – the interventions and those subtle disorientations. SR

I had good chats with Aaron Williamson who was very influenced by an exhibition about the Situationists a couple of years ago. His position is that the barriers between art and life, particularly in performance practice, is something that is constantly worth considering. He was saying it would be particularly original to discuss Disability Arts practice alongside the Situationists – this melding of art and life, and an overlay of those things. To return to Adam Reynolds’ practice, it is arguable that his collage of art and life provides an interesting frame of reference for the activity of a residency. For me, taking part in the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary significantly changed my life for three months: I temporarily moved cities, studio/ working environment and peer group. The residency became the fulfilment of a (perhaps slightly naff) fantasy of living in London with a huge studio and institutional support, and I think that the work I made was influenced by that - particularly a performance installation called Iceberg Lounge for a Frieze VIP event. I transformed the studio into a version of Mr Freeze’s lair from the 1960’s Batman TV series, including a large sculptural ‘iceberg’. I was motivated by contrasting the booming luxury end of the contemporary art market – considered as a slightly villainous enterprise – with the impending climate catastrophe. I figured that an ultimate climate change ice sculpture might just be a hunk of an actual iceberg melting away as the centrepiece of a VIP drinks event. It was great fun and really bad taste!

Manick Govinda was Head of Artists Advisory Services at Artsadmin until December 2017. Alongside Shape Arts, he co-led the delivery of Unlimited, an arts commissioning programme that supports disabled artists. Between 2004-08 he led on deciBel awards for visual artists, which awarded significant funds to Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic artists to buy time and space. Three of the awardees were subsequently shortlisted for the Turner Prize. Govinda also developed Artsadmin’s artist development work, through awarding artists’ bursaries, mentoring, advice and guidance. He has produced major works by artists such as Zarina Bhimji, Zineb Sedira and Franko B. He is now Programme Director for SPACE, a leading visual arts organisation providing creative workspace, advocacy, support and promoting innovation. Simon Raven was born in Nottingham, England and studied at the Royal College of Art. He works in performance, video and other media. In 2015 he started a PhD at Northumbria University to research the critical implications of disability to contemporary art practice. He has exhibited in shows including; Art of the Lived Experiment, Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester and Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, USA, 2015, Freud & Eros: Love, Lust and Longing, Freud Museum, London, 2014, The Wolf in the Winter, Modern Art Oxford, 2013. In 2012 he was awarded the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary, in collaboration with Camden Arts Centre.

Aaron McPeake (2013), ‘Doubt’, ‘Joy’ Photo: Rachel Cherry

Carmen Papalia (2014) ‘Things my Cane Could Be’ Photo: Carlos Jimenez

Caglar Kimyoncu (2015) Studio projection Photo: Zeynep Dagli

Oliver MacDonald (2016) ‘Untitled’

Terence Birch (2017) ‘Self-portrait as an expecting male’

Terence Birch (2017) ‘Re-enacting the pottery scene from the movie ‘Ghost’ using a foot pump that I can’t physically reach’

Artist t r o p p u S When Adam Reynolds opened his gallery in 1984, occupying a former shop on the ground floor of a small house on Walcot Square in Lambeth, he was making the kind of move that characterised his approach to life: unexpected, shrewd and with a potential to bring benefit to others that no one else could have envisaged. Adam spent his life breaking convention, refusing to be constrained by his muscular dystrophy, mischievously attempting risky acts of physical exertion, taking himself on journeys that no able-bodied person would sensibly consider and eventually becoming a powerful advocate for inclusiveness in the arts through his service as a Trustee and Chair of Shape and a member of advisory panels for Arts Council England.

Adam Reynolds (1990) â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Andicapped Adam Thanks Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Photo: David Hevey

At Walcot Square, he realised that the house would provide him with accommodation, a studio on site, a space to show his own sculpture and to exhibit the work of other artists. As an artist, he recognised that the most difficult step for emerging or even mid-career artists was to realise an exhibition in a place that other artists, curators and critics would respect. He wanted to create opportunities for artists to explore new ideas in an unusual space, without the pressures attendant on an exhibition in a commercial gallery. He knew that most artists need time, space and encouragement to produce their best work, though he himself seemed to flourish without such support.

As someone who was not expected to survive beyond his teens, he was probably driven forward by a realisation that he had little time to develop his own language. Over his twenty-year career, he developed a practice that frequently used found objects and detritus, observing that there was a parallel to be drawn between finding beauty and value in material discarded by society and ‘my lifelong experience of disability and the desire to challenge the commonplace assumption that this renders life all but useless and without value’. As his career developed, he was increasingly drawn to making works for public sites. Several were designed with the help of people with their own impairments and some seek to engage the ‘viewer’ as a participant. Undoubtedly, Adam’s own physical impairment gave him a sensitivity to the haptic quality of materials and objects that might elude someone without an impairment. As such, his works have special value and open doors to experience that would otherwise be closed. Adam died in 2005, shortly before he was due to realise a performance, ‘Sisyphus’, in front of Tate Modern, using water-scoured bricks scavenged from the Thames; a play on Carl Andre’s celebrated sculpture made in firebricks. In the period since, the creative world has become more open and determined to create opportunity and support for disabled artists involved in dance, performance, theatre, music and the visual arts. The Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary is one manifestation of such support, building on the model of Adam’s own gallery by engaging some of the best small, public galleries in the country. It provides an opportunity for reflection and exploration for disabled artists, followed by the chance to show their

work on a very visible public platform. In other initiatives, Arts Council England has also encouraged new commissions by disabled artists and performers, as in their major grant ‘Ramps on the Moon’ conceived by a group of theatres working together to produce large scale, integrated, touring theatre pieces. However, Adam would certainly have regarded progress as being too slow. He would have wanted to see a more rapid inclusion of disabled artists and performance in the wider community, making them part of general gallery and theatrical experience rather than something unusual. And, while he would have welcomed the Arts Council England initiative on placing disabled artists and professionals in leadership roles as ‘Changemakers’ in arts organisations, he would have been dismayed by the fact that in a recent survey only 5% of managers in arts organisations self-identified as ‘disabled’. He would have rightly argued that we all benefit, as audiences, participants and collaborators, when the pool of experience is deeper and broader than has been traditional.

Timeline

The need for the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary scheme is therefore as strong as it was when it began ten years ago. We should cultivate and celebrate new, different and potentially challenging voices. There is a danger that, as a country facing social and economic uncertainty, we will turn for solace to the mainstream, the known and the familiar, rather than reflecting the complex and exciting nature of a society that dares to enjoy what Adam described as ‘the contradictory nature of the universe’. Nicholas Serota,

Chair, Arts Council England and Director, Tate 1988-2017

Timeline 2016 Oliver MacDonald

Turner Contemporary, Margate

2011 Caroline Cardus

Shortlisted ARMB artist Juan delGado exhibits as part of group exhibition ‘Risk’ at Turner Contemporary.

The Baltic, Gateshead

2009 Sally Booth

Sally Booth showcases work created during her residency at Brighton Festival.

The Bluecoat, Liverpool

2014 Carmen Papalia

Caroline Cardus showcases work at the National Theatre as part of Shape’s 40th Anniversary.

V&A, London

Noëmi Lakmaier’s residency inspires Unlimited commission ‘Cherophobia’ performed at Sydney Opera House.

Simon Raven’s residency inspires a new collaboration with Jim Brouwer titled ‘Human Freak — Queue Here’, at Nottingham Castle Open.

2013 Aaron McPeake Spike Island, Bristol

Aaron McPeake commissioned by previous residency hosts Camden Arts Centre to create a new work ‘Toll’.

2008 Noëmi Lakmaier Camden Arts Centre, London

2010 Aaron Williamson Spike Island, Bristol

2012 Simon Raven

Camden Arts Centre, London

2017 Terence Birch

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

2015 Caglar Kimyoncu

The New Art Gallery at Walsall

Aaron Williamson’s residency inspires new work with ‘fake archives’ showcased in ‘Art of the Lived Experiment’ at Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester.

Aaron Williamson’s residency inspires project ‘Inspirational Archives’ at the British School at Rome which will be showcased in a solo exhibition. Sally Booth and Aaron McPeake exhibit work at Yinka Shonibare Studios, Guest Projects.

Shape Arts is a disability-led arts organisation which works to improve access to culture for disabled people by providing opportunities for disabled artists, training cultural institutions to be more open to disabled people, and through running participatory arts and development programmes. This publication is partly funded by Heritage Lottery Fund through NDACA: Heritage preserved through the medium of art. The Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary is made possible through the support of Garfield Weston Foundation.

dited by Fiona Slater E Programme Coordinator, Shape Arts Designed by Modern Activity ISBN 978-1-5272-2045-4 ompany limited by guarantee C registered in England & Wales #279184 Registered as a Charity #279184

Proud lead partners on:

We are grateful for the support of:

Shape Arts Deane House Studios 27 Greenwood Place London, NW5 1LB www.shapearts.org.uk