Feature: Accessible art by Glenn Heenan
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Pie Cart in Ruatoria
Smell that?
Could hardly miss it.
You wouldn't eat one though,
at least not until you'd drunk much
too much to know better
Ha. Remember those few weeks
that summer
when new love
convinced you to have a go at
vegetarianism?
Now you'd go a pie
most days of the week
and it seems the pleasure is greater
because you don't eat pies,
as a rule.
There's a moment though-
it's that smell, and the sun on your shoulder-
and you're taken back to
summers
when to step in a shadow
was to fall into a black hole;
a bottomless chink in the world.
They look that way today, the shadows;
the sleepy sun,
making a lie of the substance of things.
A string of flags
on top of the pie cart
waves cheerfully at the pub across the road,
making dancing holes
in the hot tarseal.
And even now,
a flash of vertigo,
and the smell
is making you queasy,
just a little.
But probably you'll have a pie,
Later.
Hell yeah,
it'll go down nicely too,
- like the day,
into the sliding shadows
Heather McCracken
How accessible is the world of art? Are you in the picture?
"let me invade the space,
becoming involved...
no need for subjective translation by another -
I'm in the picture."
This was Martine Abel's response to an art exhibition called 'More Than Looking' that was created to include blind people. 'Yes, you can touch the artworks!' the introduction boldly announced, making the point that art is so often embedded with the retail ethos of 'look but don't touch unless you purchase it first'.
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Making durable art that could be touched and experienced by blind, deafblind and vision-impaired people was a challenge that artist Glenn Heenan took on when he conceived 'More Than Looking'.
"I figured out a way to create a touch surface so that people could physically read the images," says Glenn. "Glass-on-glass embossing hadn't been done before."
Both sighted and blind people had equal access to the images, which took almost two years to prepare. At its first outing last year in the Te Tuhi The Mark Gallery in Pakuranga, Auckland, more than 11,000 people interacted with Glenn's photographic images of the New Zealand landscape within three weeks.
"It was amazing," says Glenn, "to see people reading the works in so many different ways. Kids with glaucoma had their eyes right up against the glass while others were stepping right back to view them."
Each image was accompanied by a poem translated into braille by the RNZFB. Well-known local poets such as Keri Hulme, Ruth Dallas and Michele Leggott contributed the poems, which Glenn says added other dimensions to the exhibition, such as sound and texture. All three of these poets have experience with sight loss.
Gallery curator Rhoda Fowler was equally impressed. "It was one of the most effective shows we've had," she says, "because Glenn took an ethical perspective; he made the work with real integrity and a lot of thought."
For Glenn, the inspiration was in the responses. "The exhibition proves there's a real want and a need. Blind people are just as interested in art (as sighted people) and have a right to access galleries, like everyone else. If I can support equal access I feel I'm doing something right."
The view that art should be accessible through senses other than sight is one that elicits a range of responses.
"We will never have a sign on the gallery wall that says, 'do not touch', says Art by the Sea owner Mike Geers. The Devonport gallery is one of a handful to have taken the issue of accessible art to heart. It has hosted a tactile exhibition and sells art works to vision-impaired art buyers.
The RNZFB contacted a number of nationally funded galleries and museums around the country for comment on tactile art and accessibility to art without sight. Most phone calls went unreturned. When asked why, one North Island curator responded that he simply hadn't understood the question, that a blind person could no more access the art world than be expected to drive
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a car. Touching art doesn't give any access to its real meaning, he said.
That may be an extreme view and not reflective of the gallery's position, but does art need to be interpreted or mediated in order for a blind person to have a relationship with it, in the same way that braille interprets the written word? Descriptive tours, during which a sighted person describes the art works to a blind person, are the most common form of mediated access. What about access through touch itself?
Glenn Heenan is just one of a number of photographers internationally who are experimenting with translating images into touch. Award-winning Parisian Yann Arthus-Bertrand spent 10 years taking aerial photographs over 76 countries and put together an exhibition called Earth From the Air. It is a bird's-eye view, blown up into large-scale images (good for partially sighted people) of extraordinary patterns and colours in natural landscapes.
The 160 images were translated using black and white cellulose acetate (an all-natural plastic) and precision etching so they could be interpreted by touch. These images were then presented with large print and braille narrative panels.
Nelson artist Tracey Polglaze also sees a relationship being created physically through touch as well as cerebrally through ideas. "There's a belief," she says, "that
if you touch something, a part of your energy goes into that object."
Tracey is creating a tactile exhibition for Blind Week in October in the hope that her art work will exude a greater sense of meaning and energy through all the hands that touch and appreciate them. Her inspiration came from living with her vision-impaired stepfather. Each piece will be labelled in braille and be shaped in ways that recreate natural forms.
Blindfolds and special glasses will be available for sighted people to experience certain visual impairments while viewing the art.
The UK has an Arts Council funded organisation called Art Through Touch. The organisation is dedicated to making art more accessible for vision-impaired people. It also questions the assumption that blind, deafblind and vision-impaired people are only passive recipients of the art rather than being involved in
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the creative process. "There is a mutual benefit to both sighted and visually impaired people together exploring art, ideas and our surroundings, sharing a range of varied and different perspectives and perceptions," it says.
The same modern art curator who is unconvinced that blind people can access art also did not believe that there were any 'serious' blind, deafblind or vision-impaired artists whose work deserved space in a major New Zealand gallery. As Irish artist Padraig Naughton comments, most vision-impaired artists have avoided speaking openly about the consequences of their vision impairment on their work, for fear of losing their clients or not being taken seriously.
"Historically," Padraig says, "the prevailing attitude has been that for visually impaired people art, and particularly craft, could only be therapeutic and recreational activities."
Padraig, who is vision-impaired, is a ceramics artist who also works with charcoal. While artist in residence at the Richard Attenborough Centre for Disability and the Arts at Leicester University he researched a book called "Artists at Work". The book contains discussions with seven successful artists about how their partial sight impacts on the way they, as practising artists, relate to their environment. The website address to find out more about the book is given below.
Exhibitions
Imagine - by Tracey Polglaze, The Rutherford Hotel, 25-30 October. All the art works will be sold at a charity auction to raise money for the RNZFB.
Glenn Heenan reproduces his photographic images for sale. You can ph: 09 826 0453 or email slideway@ihug.co.nz.
The Christchurch Art Gallery, Te Puna o Waiwetu, is fully accessible and will arrange audio descriptive group tours of the collection and exhibitions if you book a fortnight in advance. An audio guide is also available.
Useful websites:
Introduction to the book "Artists at Work" by Padraig Naughton