My Views on this Exhibition

by Simon Parritt

Art historians and critics tend to order art into movements, and generally from their standpoint this works as a good indicator and guide to the complex array of work that has been produced over the years. It would be wrong, I think though, to assume that this is the only effective way of dealing with art. Very often the appreciation of the work of a particular artist is enhanced by an understanding of their personal lives, the environment they lived in and the political and social background that may have influenced their visions. So, usually we would trace the development of style and innovation in a broadly linear way, placing the individual within that framework.

In this exhibition the purpose has not been to position the artists only in their style category but to gather together artists who have a common social/emotional experience. That is being labeled either from their first contact with the world or in later life, as disabled, which is a disabling classification in itself. This is not to say that the work is a direct result of those experiences, but because of the overpowering force of being classified by society as handicapped with all the negative social, emotional and sexual responses that definition elicits, it is hoped that some of the artists' work would begin to draw back the curtain between the isolation of disability and the emotional barriers built by society to protect themselves (from their own nightmares and feelings of isolation).

Disability is an amplifier of the isolation that is within all people from birth to death and beyond. We hide from or resist this ultimate feeling of loneliness by various means, the most obvious and one of the most powerful is sexual and emotional contact between individuals. Disablement interrupts the common routes to these all too momentary periods when the isolation that rests within us all can be dispelled. Many artists in the past who have found themselves social outcasts, have shown as an aspect of their work, a symbolic reaching out, a desperate clinging to a visual, verbal or tactile contact.

Very often, disabled people have little or no chance to love, to be loved, to express lust or be the object of lust. It is a great sorrow to me that this dam of emotion is trapped within people with no means of expression. Society seems unable to offer release. Art sometimes could but it is rare for truly good work to emerge from disabled people. For a disabled person to choose to be an artist, if it is a matter of choice, is a double risk. Already an outcast, a freak in the eyes of normal society, being an artist makes him even more isolated, unless he paints calendars or Christmas Cards So many handicapped people spend their lives seeking love and emotional contact with society by struggling to be accepted in areas of personality, job achievement or intellectual ability. By choosing to be an artist, consciously or not, we are on a knife edge, for art has only little to do with social acceptance, or a job. It has, at least for me, to do with questions, a search for wonder, for spontaneity or love, for resonance.

The work in this exhibition is of varying standards and styles. Some of the highest order by established artists, some not so high. But all the work is by artists not content with using their life and talent to express platitudes or associate with art as therapy: they are presenting their deepest thoughts and feelings, some obviously less directly. Even the most naive of them are nevertheless artists, of another order from the Sunday painter, the hobby artist or work done to pass the day.

Here is presented our lives, our fears, our fantasies, our failures, our triumphs. They are yours too. I was disabled at a very early age and it obviously has had some bearing on my life style, but whether it is a contributing factor to me becoming an artist. I couldn't say. For me, art is very difficult in almost every respect. If I were sensible in choosing a profession, I would have become a solicitor or scientist, as I probably have the grasp of such thinking. But I have become involved in the artistic world: NOT through rehabilitation or school (I rejected both these environments, in fact, my worst time was spent during my school years.

Although I was interested in art, I was not considered good. I was considered good at maths and sciences. Art for me is a struggle. I am beset with self doubt. I was afraid for years to call myself an artist despite having spent four years at art schools. I used to tell people, even when I was painting and producing various works, that I was an artist only when forced. When I'm working at something, it is fine, if exhausting, but as soon as I stop, I have this desire to rip it up and start again. Many a work has gone this way unfortunately. If I've been doing other things from my work I get very uneasy that I haven't done any work for some time. I get terrified that I won't be able to continue to get new ideas and perspective for my work.

This exhibition was very hard for me to submit work for, as I have never really thought of how being disabled has influenced my work. It certainly affected the medium I use, as I couldn't do large sculptures or carvings, for example, but I don't think it has anything to do with the general message or raison d'etre for my work . However, I rethought this stance in the light of the erotic side of my work. A great deal of art is about the sexual response to our world. When I was disabled at five with Polio , I was lucky in as much as I was a very appealing child, and the sexual side of me was given expression through contact with nurses who fell over themselves to be with me, to hold me, to love me, etc. Don't let people tell you children are not aware of sex: I was. I suppose all through my early childhood and even early teens, I was able to have a fairly normal sexual developement.

However, when the late teens arrived, I found myself sought socially but ultimately rejected sexually, which was a deep shock to me as I had always been the centre of female attention. Up until this time I believed I was attractive despite my deformity and I was so entrenched in this self belief that, when everyone else was having sexual relationships, I continued in my sexual isolation to believe in the comments said to me over the early years of my life: that I was attractive, humorous and a person many women would want.

It wasn't until I was about twenty-five that I realised that I was "DISABLED" and that, yes, women wanted me, but not my body. I suppose that, as I regard myself as a very sexual person, and that has for so long been denied expression, it has surfaced in some of my work, although I was not aware of it being an ingredient when I was producing it. I work by luck, by intuition, but mostly by hard slog. Part of me knows some of my work is good and that part of me is frightened that my reputation as an artist will be contaminated by my revelations of disability. I fear, through very painful previous experiences, that just as my body is rejected despite my other attributes, so my art will ultimately be rejected because of its source. So I have, like an ever-trusting idiot yet again, put my belief in you not to invalidate me.

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