Last months artwork

 Back in June, I created a small edition of this linocut.

Practicing Stillness amidst Covid confusion, linocut, edition of 13, 10x15cm, 2022

And three of this edition have now landed in Queensland, to be part of the Printbank Mackay's biennial Print Exchange.

As many of you already may know, I love Print Exchanges. It is a great tradition in the printmaking world. Over the past decade, I have participated in dozens of exchanges, across the planet.

Printbank Mackay is one of my favourites. They are lovely people to work with, such that it is possible that I have been part of every Print Exchange they have held. They also encourage artists to send each art postcard individually in the mail. This means that each artwork ends up with a stamp and postmark as well as the scuffs of postal travel. And as someone passionate about stamps and postmarks, this makes me super happy! 

Here is the backside of the artwork (prior to postal travel).

Back side of the artwork. The text reads:
2/13 Practicing stillness amidst the covid confusion, linocut, 2022
As a disabled person reliant on health care, it is a massive feat to say calm as the health system collapses and eugenics advances.
This linocut reflects some of my daily struggle in an ableist society during covid times.
I am a proud disabled queer artist, living in Narrm, working across a printmaking, street art and community art practice.

Each year there is a theme and this years was 'Still'.

This artwork was important for me to make. I have spent a lot of the past two years, attempting to speak about the increasing difficulties in accessing health care. Covid times have made my life and those of many others dependant on health care, really difficult. But in response to my rants, I have often experienced denial and gaslighting. It has been hard. And so this year, I have been trying to be calm and rant less. And make more art!

Of course easier said than done, when the health system continues to buckle under the pressure of increasing Covid (and Long Covid) cases, as well as staff leaving the industry due to burnout. And my health just gets worse.

At the moment, it feels like the incredible strain that the health system is under is getting more media attention. It makes me feel more seen. But I also despair as I am not sure that this attention will bring any real or lasting change. Especially as those that are most affected by a failing health system, are those already with much less voice, those marginalised by poverty, race, gender diversity and disability.

My hope is that this artwork brings some visibility to this issue. 

And right now, I am feeling some relief, as one of my medications that I have been waiting on for some weeks, has just arrived. Hoping for some less pain disturbed sleep tonight.

Another Disability Pride Month art moment...

 In this last week of Disability Pride Month in July, I did a bit of guerilla art on the Footscray Telstra Building, which until recently held the Disability Pride is Back! Mural.

I pasted up some letters based on my linocuts. It reads:

'To all my disabled folk, 

    Happy Disability Pride Month

             July 2022'

The wall was looking pretty bare, apart from a few tags and some ghost remains of the original mural, which you can see more in these two photos. (Back in 2018, I was experimenting with using silicone to attach these particular artworks, so whilst the artworks are now gone, the shadows remain!)

I wanted to do a shout out for those out for those who miss the mural. And create some visibility for Disability Pride Month.  And this little paste up matched my spoons for this week. 

Let's hope this paste up stays awhile.

Happy Disability Pride Month

July is Disability Pride month!!. 

It is regularly celebrated in USA, but still relatively new here in Australia. 

(It is in July, because the ADA - Americans with Disabilities Act, was first signed on 26 July 1990.) 

'Thinking of you', Linocut, screen print, and found postage stamp, Edition of 8, 12x12cm

backside of the artwork

To welcome in this year’s Pride month, I made this new artwork, with new invented postmarks. 

The postmark on the back uses the Australia Post logo and one of their designs, but changes the wording to incorporate one of the disability rights slogans ‘Piss on pity’.

Disability Pride is about being proud of our lives and celebrating human diversity. It is also being proud of our struggle to resist ableism and speak back to attitudes of charity and pity.

This small artwork will be exhibited in Queensland in August at Umbrella Contemporary Arts gallery. Yay!

It has taken me ages to make this post, because things have been a bit chaotic in my life with few spare spoons this month whilst in a chronic pain/fatigue crash. This is mostly due to the ongoing difficulties in accessing the supports I need, mostly due to the impacts of Covid. But knowing it is Disability Pride Month and the history of disabled activism that has led to this moment, has brought me comfort. It has also given me extra permission to not get so down on myself for being  ‘too emotional’, or not reading the signs well and upsetting others, as well as not meeting my obligations and commitments. Being hard on myself like this, is an expression of ‘internalised ableism’. Thus, Disability Pride is also about recognising when we enact ableism upon ourselves, and remembering that this is related to systemic, cultural ways of thinking that believes that disabled people are lesser. And we are not! 

Disability Pride is also about finding ways to be kind to ourselves and each other. 

Here’s to all disabled people across the world. I am thinking of you!