The Bank Street Arts Exhibition gets nearer – printing and production values

I’ve just spent this morning arranging for my three series of images being exhibited at Bank Street Arts in Sheffield this July to be printed and mounted. There is a group of us – six to be exact – and we have a website here: (link).

What I always find so interesting is the massive difference in the viewing experience between that of seeing images on a screen and viewing them as physical objects.

These are the images I will be showing:

Paralysis
 
This series of images display aspects of living with the implications of spinal cord injury. All the images relate to issues Maslow referred to as hygiene factors within his hierarchy of needs classification – that is they relate to my managing my survival rather than relating to any superior quality of life issues.

Landscape of Disability

My impairment – spinal cord injury – means that I can’t walk. But we’ve invented lots of devices to enable me to get around such as wheelchairs, but for access to work my needs have to be recognised and not ignored. Here images talk to that subject in terms of the physical landscape I inhabit; these are the result of decisions of social administration, organisation or people’s attitudes.

Ramps
 
We all have places we feel uncomfortable in. The external physical environment is a hostile place for me. I am always looking for wheelchair access and the avoidance of things like dog shit and broken glass when moving around and this often means that I am not concentrating on who I am with or what they are saying, so it affects social relations as well as how I feel.

The experience
The experience of viewing the photos here is very different to that I envisage for the exhibition. For a start the Paralysis set will be printed at 6×6 and presented on 10 by 10 frames so will evoke a claustrophobic viewing experience whereas the landscape images will be presented at 16 x 12 borderless and  so offer none of that sensation and Ramps is shown at 32 inches with all images viewed simultaneously and so inviting the viewer to wander visually over the typology.

I’ve just got to explore the best method of hanging them now….

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