Unlimited

Unlimited is a unique commissioning programme, aimed at disabled artists and delivered in partnership between Shape Arts and Artsadmin.  Our goals are to embed work by disabled artists within the UK cultural sector, reach new audiences and shift perceptions of disabled people. With partners ACE, Creative Scotland, Arts Council Wales, the British Council and the Spirit of 2012, Unlimited plays a significant and strategic part in the commitment of funders to combat discrimination, disadvantage and prejudice, and to address the dearth of disabled creatives in the UK cultural landscape.

Unlimited crosses all art forms and this year supported some ambitious live art commissions; notably new work by Aaron Williamson and Noemi Lakmaier. Both artists have developed relationships with LADA, Artsadmin and Shape and fit well into the aims of Unlimited: to develop, produce and show ambitious work.

Noemi Lakmaier's durational 48-hour living-installation, Cherophobia, was a collaboration with Michael Wüst, a world-renowned rope suspension expert, in a live attempt to raise the artists tied and immobilised body off the ground by attaching over 20,000 helium party balloons. This spectacular one-off performance was held in the atmospheric St. Leonard's Church, Shoreditch and broadcast to the SouthBank Centre and Glasgow’s Tramway (both Unlimited Festival host venues).

Aaron Williamson's ambitious new work, Demonstrating the World, took the form of a durational public intervention performance disguised as an everyday consumerist exposition. Staged from a purpose-built 'roadshow' trailer, the public demonstrations involved a set of often-mundane activities, such as taking off a jacket or sitting on a chair, accompanied by a series of defined hand-shapes, like 'the claw' or 'hook'. Williamson’s amplified running commentary and visual language of movements, all in the middle of a public space, plays with our perceptions of an ‘alien’ in our midst.

Categories: Report


Date Posted: 26 October 2016