A unique art exhibition featuring work created by Irish Sign Language (ISL) users from the Deaf community in County Louth has opened at the Droichead Arts Centre.
Called Hidden Abilities, the exhibition features work produced at a series of workshops facilitated by an ISL interpreter and Art As Exchange (AAEX), an open, all-inclusive group of visual artists, facilitated and supported by Creative Spark. It opened last night and runs until 6 September from11.00 am to 4.00 pm.
Hidden Abilities is a diverse exploration of creative expression through performance, photography, drawing, design and sculptural 3D construction. Project themes include bodily relations to colour, space, signs and symbols, identity politics, cultural blindness, social anonymity and the theatrics of (in)visibility.
Embracing freedom of expression for Deaf Community artists, the project aims to build alliances across the Deaf and Hearing Community, providing a platform to create and co-host this multi-lingual exhibit.
The project interweaves artistic musings, evocative memories and colourful reflections on continued desires to express and integrate Irish Sign Language into our shared space (here and beyond the gallery). The featured artworks create a space for playful transformation, experimentation and self-expression – inviting you to feel welcome, look, and consider Irish Sign Language.
‘All the world’s a stage’ is a playful art installation created with artist Michael Stafford. Michael led collaborative workshops developing collage as an abstract basis for 3D models. The group hand painted wooden boards inspired by the collages. Once assembled together, the flat surface transforms into architectural planes that create these full scale 3D sculptures.
Artist Julie Corcoran focused on the message participants wanted to convey in the exhibit, to show you their hidden abilities. Participants observed the power of symbols in photography, through examples of Julie’s work and responded to what was on display in the Droichead gallery at the time of the workshops (a photographic exhibition by young people around Drogheda).
Some were drawn to the pet portraits, others saw sadness in the boarded up houses during a housing crisis; this fed into what was photographed on the photo walks around the town. They also went in search of sunflowers, the international symbol for hidden disabilities. The second photo walk followed the Drawda Mural Trail.
On display from these workshops with Julie are two large black and white photographs (Inclusion and Street Unscene), with participants’ photographs printed on archival paper and a video installation.
The large roll of photographs taken by participants at the workshops includes one piece by Julie called Clodagh who used props from Julie’s workshop to dress up, holding a sunflower. You can barely make out her hearing aid and Julie used photo manipulation to create a piece in which Clodagh is looking at herself, standing in front of her own front door.
