The LAB Gallery presents, ‘A Consideration of All Bodies’, a group exhibition of work by Declan Byrne, Philip Kenny, Paul Moore, Hugh O’Donnell and Áine O’Hara. All the artists and the curator have disabilities. The exhibition is installed in the gallery and available to view from the street. It also has an online programme of events and discussions.

The exhibition is curated by ARC-LAB Curatorial Scholar Róisín Power Hackett

Here is the exhibitions programme of events. These events are free, but they must be booked via Eventbrite. 

Here are images of the artworks on instagram @aconsiderationofallbodies

‘A Consideration of All Bodies’, contemplates disabled people’s bodies and our ways of navigating a world designed for nondisabled bodies. Rather than explicitly referencing disability, the artworks in this exhibition reflect the artists’ experiences of interacting with their environments. The artists examine bodies, their own and other people’s. What support do bodies need, and how might this support change in the future?

Despite the western world valuing individual autonomy over the collective, our democratic freedom in fact rests on people creating support structures and working together. This has been made even more evident in our current time of Covid 19. Disabled people have always needed support systems. The western emphasis on individual autonomy has undermined and undervalued our experiences. As disabled people, we develop some of our sense of self from this dependence on other people and things, and from our struggle against this dependence. From prostheses, wheelchairs, and canes to chairs and benches in public spaces, to a network of family and friends, to public services like health and transport, the supports we have come in many forms. These are vital to our well-being. The exhibition and events programme for ‘A Consideration of All Bodies’ focuses on how bodies are, are not, or could be supported.

The programme of events will have access for people with hearing and visual impairments. However, the focal point of ‘A Consideration of All Bodies’, is a social narrative for the LAB Gallery, written by the curator Róisín Power Hackett, and designed by Dara Ní Bheacháin. This social narrative is an access tool and will be available to download as a pdf from the gallery’s website for use by all future visitors to the LAB when we return. A social narrative is a great tool for everyone planning to visit the gallery, but it is specifically designed for autistic visitors.

Photographs and videos of ‘A Consideration of All Bodies’ are available on Instagram @thelabgallery and @aconsiderationofallbodies, Facebook and Vimeo.

This exhibition is supported by Dublin City Council, ARC at IADT, Arts & Disability Ireland and the Arts Council. The artists featuring in this exhibition have also been supported to make their work by A4 Sounds ‘We only want the earth’ programme and Flax Art Studios.

Artists:

Áine O’Hara is a multidisciplinary artist, theatre maker and designer who graduated with a BA in Fine Art from IADT in 2013. Since then they have shown work nationally and internationally. Áine’s recent achievements include Mayo Arts Office Navigating a Future Commission (2021), Arts Council Theatre Bursary (2020), Arts & Disability Connect Training Award (2020), Outburst Queer Fringe Award (2019), Oileán AiR programme (2019) and DUETS award at Dublin Fringe Festival (2019). Áine’s work experiments with form, and focuses on connection, conversation, and care. Their long-term ambitions include demanding adequate access to theatre and the arts for disabled and marginalised communities through the creation of large scale, ambitious work as well as the continuation of community building projects like Chronic Chats; a creative and social group for chronically ill people which grew from their research as part of her recent artist residency at A4 Sounds, Dublin. Áine is currently artist in residence at Axis Ballymun.

For his sculpture works the visual artist Declan Byrne carefully cuts pieces of dried acrylic paint found in painting pallets with scissors, before gluing these small pieces of colour to found objects. There is a remarkable similarity between these sculptures and Declan’s paintings.  In Declan’s paintings he also transforms the world he sees in a very detailed way, by building his work out of multiple small sections of colours. Declan has shown widely internationally, including in Luxembourg, Finland, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and the UK. He has also shown in Ireland at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, Dublin City Council Offices, The Skibbereen Arts Festival and University College Cork. He has been involved in a number of exchange and engagements projects, including with Project Ability Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland.

Hugh O’Donnell is a visual artist based in Belfast. He works in performance art, drawing, installation and found objects. Found objects really interest him, whether they are an old pipe or a shoe hanging out of a skip. He has exhibited work on a national and international level. Hugh has facilitated many visual art and performance art workshops on a global capacity and has also completed many national and international residencies. He obtained a B.A Degree and a Master’s in Fine Art from University of Ulster, Belfast. In addition, Hugh has received a lot of art awards from Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Arts Council of Ireland and international awards for residencies and commissions. He has worked as an audio describer and out-reach workshop facilitator for University of Atypical in Belfast. Recently he has been audio describing for Shape Arts in London. He proudly identifies as disabled and encourages everyone to speak about disability equality issues, especially mental health.

Paul Moore is a visual artist based in Belfast. He is a graduate of the MA in Art Research and Collaboration from Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology. His selected shows include Unsettlement, Platform Arts Gallery, Belfast (2017), G R O U P S H O W, Golden Thread Gallery Belfast (2016). Statəcraft, Irish Museum of Modern Art Project Space, Dublin (2016), lorem ipsum, ADF Gallery Belfast (2015) and Palace Revolution, Galveston Arts Centre, Texas U.S.A. (2014). In 2019, Moore received the ACNI Artist Career Enhancement Scheme to work with Golden Thread Gallery, where he is currently developing work which is informed by VR and the phenomenology of endurance exercise, the body and the landscape, nature and machine, and internal and external experience.

Phil Kenny is a poet based in Dublin. Recently he has exhibited in the Arts and Disability Ireland Curated Spaces online exhibition, ‘The Finest Specimens of Fossilised Duration’. Previously he has performed at Knockan Stockan and Electric Picnic. Additionally, Philip received the Arts Council and Arts & Disability Ireland Mentoring Award in 2019 and has been published in Storytellers edited by Anna Fox.  The poems he writes and performs are personal, sensory, sometimes normal (relatively) and often surreal and abstract. He has mild Asperger’s Syndrome, which connects the world in a way he is familiar with, but often appears obscure to others. For Philip, writing and speaking has ever been a way of connecting people to that world.

Curator:

Róisín Power Hackett is a curator, writer, and visual artist. She graduated with a BA in Fine Art in 2012 and an MA in Art in the Contemporary World in 2013 both from NCAD. In 2019 Róisín was awarded the ARC LAB Curatorial Scholarship. For this scholarship, she researched inclusion in and access to the arts for disabled people. In 2020, she curated ‘The Finest Specimens of Fossilised Duration’ an online exhibition commissioned by Arts and Disability Ireland. For Culture Night 2020 at the LAB Gallery, she produced the podcast ALL BODIES. In 2018, she curated Towards A Consideration of All Bodies at the LAB Gallery. Róisín has received the Waterford County Council Tyrone Guthrie Bursary (2019), the Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary Award (2018), the Waterford County Council Artlinks Bursary (2017&2016), the Kennedy Wilson NCAD Access Studio Residency (2016) and the Arts and Disability Connect Training Award (2015).