Talkabout adorn, equip
work-in-progress exhibition
I'm Ju Gosling, also known as ju90. As ju90, I go on the Internet with a name that doesn't give any clues as to my gender, age, race, sexuality or disability, so that people are forced to meet me initially without making the judgements based on my appearance which they would in real life. However, since I include the address of my Home Page site in my signature file, it is subsequently possible to discover all of these things about me, and further that these are inscribed on my virtual body. My virtual embodiment therefore demonstrates that socially constructed identities such as gender, age, race, sexuality and disability are ultimately meaningless, since I can appear quite independently of them, yet that, at the same time, the effects of this labelling have contributed towards my own identity.)
Anyway, I'm going to start by telling you the story of how I came to decorate this brace, before going on to talk about the exhibition itself and the issues which it raises.
While I'm proud to be disabled, I'm in chronic pain as the result of a so-called malformed spine and associated inflammation, and it's important to me to live my life as fully as I can. So, after seeing a procession of doctors, in November 1996 I obtained a referral to the aptly named Henry V. Crock, Consultant Spinal Surgeon at the Cromwell Hospital's Spinal Disorders Unit, who is the first doctor that I have ever actually felt comfortable with. He suggested that, since mobilising my spine through exercise only tends to aggravate my pain, immobilising it might allow the inflammation to calm down, and perhaps even to heal permanently. He therefore referred me to Kelvin Smith, an orthoptist based at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, who made a plaster cast of my body in order to mould me this custom-made spinal brace. As well as immobilising my spine, the brace encourages me to stand naturally, if crookedly. Twenty years of trying to force my body into a 'normal' silhouette - after being accused repeatedly by doctors of having 'bad' posture - had not helped my pain.
While I was delighted at the prospect of being in less pain, trying the brace on for the first time was a frightening experience. The feeling of being confined made me panic and hyperventilate, and the brace's appearance filled me with horror. Its white nylon straps were made of the same material as the fastenings on my racing dinghy. Its surgical pink surface took no account of ethnic difference: if you were 'white', you were pink. Its shape exaggerated my waist and hips, while my breasts were the only part of my torso left exposed, creating a feminised, almost Edwardian silhouette.
And the hospital had taken great care to ascertain my marital status, labelling it by my 'lack' of a husband as belonging to 'Miss' Gosling (a title which I never use) in a manner which suggested (rightly, but for the wrong reasons) that it would always be that way. Added to the fact that almost none of my clothes would fit either under or over the brace, I felt my identity dissolve; the brace had claimed me, borg-like, to wear it. I fitted into the brace, but the brace did not fit me. My androgynous image had vanished; instead the brace/borg exaggerated my femininity and impairment whilst conflating the two.
This increased my sense of confinement, a negative image of disability which I had always fought against. Like a wheelchair, the brace was meant to liberate me, by allowing me to do more than I could otherwise; like a wheelchair, I could leave it when I wanted. But now my personality was trapped within the borg/brace. The only answer was to reassert my ownership, to assimilate the brace within myself rather than continuing to be assimilated by it.
One reason why disability aids are commonly perceived as having negative connotations is the depersonalising, identity-stripping effect of their stifling uniformity and medicalised appearance - our aids reduce us to and categorise us by our impairments in a reflection of the way in which the medical profession treats us. I had already discovered the difference which a personalised aid makes with public reactions to my much-admired stick, which was carved by Rick Leech out of one piece of hazel, with the handle in the form of a seal with buffalo horn eyes. My stick signifies something very different to the standard metal, medical aid - its unique appearance restores its associations with gender-bending, clowning and discipline, as well as, in this case, having connotations of paganism and shamanism - but it performs exactly the same task as the standard medical aid. In fact, as a result of becoming involved in this exhibition, I contacted Rick and spoke to him for the first time about the part which the stick plays in my life and the fact that it is now well-known through my website, which was a very interesting experience for both of us!
Anyway, six months before being fitted with the brace, I had been fortunate enough to meet Jo Lang, a costume designer who trained at Falmouth and Bournemouth Colleges of Art. Jo creates costumes with attitude under her own label, Kiss My Ass, and luckily regarded transforming the brace as a challenge. She took my vague ideas and realised them far better than I could have imagined, whilst still allowing me ongoing input and control.
Our over-riding aim was to make the brace more comfortable to wear, in every sense. I had no wish to deny my impairment, to disavow my deviance. Making impairment visible illuminates a fundamental truth: the perfect body does not exist, and its illusion can only be maintained while the disabled body is hidden from sight. But at the same time, I did not want to be medicalised by the appearance of the brace. Medical images are those of surveillance and social regulation, used to classify, discipline and manage the body. Meanwhile media images of disabled people distort us as objects of pity, as a burden to others, or as super-crips who have overcome what is seen as the tragedy of our lives, and these images are played up by charities which are run by and largely employ non-disabled people in order to get donations. I therefore wanted to control my own image, to mark my body in a way which was meaningful to me, and to reject my body's classification by its impairment.
I also wanted to acknowledge the extent to which I was performing a disabled identity rather than reflecting a biological essentialism, using imagery which would shift the balance of power over my body in my favour and emphasise Pride. If, as soon as others see the signifiers of disability - since my experiences are similar when I am only using the stick - I am expected to play a role for them, I wanted to challenge their expectations of what that role would be. And if they feel that, because I am disabled, they have the right to look at me - and then to patronise me, to abuse me, or to look away after dismissing me as being of no account - I wanted to challenge their expectations of what that look would reveal, and to make them look again.
There are two environments where I feel most comfortable: the beach; and cyberspace. I was conceived and grew up by the sea, and have always chosen to spend my holidays there. Since becoming disabled, I feel more comfortable walking on sand than on pavements, and the warmer the sunshine, the more my impairment diminishes. And I can achieve more physically in the water than on the land - even trapezing a racing dinghy and body boarding during my fittest periods. As a pagan, the beach is also important to me as the shifting border between the land and the ocean. Paganism recognises the one true essentialism: that we are an inseparable part of nature. Paganism has been very helpful to me in coming to terms with impairment, since it reminds us that our efforts to control nature are illusory; instead, nature controls us.
However, I have always been charmed by technology and felt comfortable with it, and hypermedia has provided me with a way of combining my skills and interests where none previously existed, so in a real sense I feel born to it as well as to the beach. While my impairment still impedes my work, cyberspace itself is not an inherently disabling environment.
In addition, travelling in cyberspace literally allows me to detach myself from my body, since the concentration involved diminishes my awareness of pain. (I don't find being in pain distressing - it lost its emotional impact for me a long time ago - but it obviously can be very intrusive.)
We decided, then, to use both beach and techno imagery within the customisation. Jo and I also wanted to reflect and challenge attitudes towards disabled bodies. Both of us are opposed to the false worship of the unattainable perfect body, as reflected in the objectification of gay men's and straight women's bodies and in debates about creating 'post-humans' and 'leaving the meat behind'. So we wanted the brace to present me as a proud object of desire, rather than as medicalised and asexual.
I felt that the cyborg, an artificial human who is partially inorganic, was a useful visual metaphor to use, both in terms of popular culture and in terms of the academic cyborg debate which is currently so popular in studies ranging from art to communication to the body. I also wanted to locate myself as a disabled woman within those discourses, because the disabled body is currently absent from them, whereas if it were included, many of these discourses would be problematised.
For example, the idea that, in the coming millennium, we will all be augmented and upgraded by technology would be undermined by the realisation that scientists can't produce an artificial hip joint which will reliably last longer than ten years, and indeed, that the body is so resistant to being 'upgraded' that people who have had transplants need to take drugs for the rest of their lives to prevent rejection. Likewise, the idea that we will all be able to take so-called 'smart drugs' to enhance our abilities would be problematised by including the experiences of disabled people, given our awareness of the side-effects of drugs, and our knowledge that the drugs we rely on may also shorten our lives or even kill us.
Cyborgs, too, are seen on the one hand as being asexual, genderless, and on the other hand as being extremely sexual - think of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, or the Star Trek character Seven of Nine. This is echoed, not just in the perception of disabled people as being either asexual or deviant lovers, but also as genderless - to give an example, public toilets in the UK are divided into those for Men, Women and the Disabled.
The cyborg body, too, is a combination of technology and the organic, and disabled people are commonly visualised as being partially inorganic when we use technology to extend our abilities. For example, wheelchair users are described as being 'confined to a wheelchair', which gives the impression that we remain in our chairs even whilst asleep. (Although it is also true that, for me, the use of my stick has become natural - when I am tired and watching the television, I often find myself wondering how a character is getting up and walking without the use of one . . . )
For some reason, disabled people's use of aids such as sticks, braces and wheelchairs is regarded as being fundamentally different in nature to the other ways in which we rely on technology to live our daily lives in the West. The use of cars, bicycles, phones, computers, domestic technology such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines - all these, in contrast, are seen as being entirely natural. Equally, the use of chemicals such as contraceptives to alter the body is seen as being entirely different to the use of insulin or anti-depressants.
Cyborgs, too, are visualised as being less than human within popular culture, and therefore as not being deserving of human rights. Indeed, cyborgs are often seen as being a threat to humans, and therefore require containing. Disabled people, meanwhile, lack human and civil rights throughout the world. We are also seen as dangerous - in popular culture, physical impairment is used as a metaphor for evil, while IRL, women with mental health needs are stigmatised as potential killers and are forcibly drugged, restrained and imprisoned.
As a disabled woman, therefore - and as a queer, androgynous woman who has frequently been mistaken for a gay man and who does not conform to a number of female roles; who is white but of indeterminate ethnic background; from a mobile class background; with an impairment that ranges between leaving me bedridden to participating in watersports; with eyes that have been augmented by glasses and later by contact lenses since the age of seven; with a number of identities as a result; with a memory and brainpower which has been augmented by a Psion palmtop computer since 1992; and with my ability to communicate enhanced by a mobile phone since 1994 - I felt that I could justifiably claim and explore a cyborg identity.
I also like the cyberpunk ethic, having begun my career as the editor of a zine with an explicit punk philosophy. And as I am hooked on the usual techno-pagan mixture of popular culture, I greatly preferred the idea of looking like an extra from Star Trek to one from Casualty. Jo and I therefore decided to combine surf and cyberpunk imagery to transform the brace, changing borg to cyborg, geek_girl to net_surf_chick and 'Miss' Gosling to ju90.
Jo began by spraying the brace a metallic silver with a blue tinge. Metal is inorganic: disabled people are regarded as less than organic and/or as inseparable from our inorganic aids. Metal is associated with hardness, power: pink with softness, weakness. Metal is androgynous: pink femme. And unlike the surgical pink plastic, metal does not pretend to be flesh; perceived as artificial, the brace/borg separated itself from me.
Jo then added a dolphin image to the back of the brace, as it's one of my favourite symbols. When Jo showed me her first work on the brace, I wanted to be able to make sense of it as a whole. To me, this dolphin symbolises my spirit rising up above adversity - in this case the dolphin literally rises up above the site of my impairment. The Yin-Yang symbol which Jo incorporated reminds me of the philosophy which I learn in Tai Chi, as well as the principles of Chinese medicine and the wholeness of androgyny. It particularly recalls to me the Chi Kung exercise where you repeat: 'I love and accept myself the way I am.' Here the symbol is used playfully; the dolphin balances the symbol of balance. In doing so it also parodies performing dolphins - sometimes I feel like a circus exhibit.
Underneath the dolphin Jo added a shattered CD, which is very symbolic since it is placed partially over the area where my spine is deteriorating. It also reminds me that the CD is fast becoming obsolete, illustrating the speed with which technology changes - I like the challenge of change. Aside from this, I like the way in which it reflects light and is transformed by light. Jo engraved the CD with ju90: as a borg, the brace turned me into Miss Gosling; as a cyborg, it recognised me.
Because of the dolphin, I saw the surface of the brace as an underwater environment. I therefore asked Jo to add some green to the silver, partly to increase the underwater effect, and partly to reflect the colours of one of my favourite rings. This ring originally belonged to my father's mother, who gave it to my mother on the eve of my parents' wedding as they had been unable to afford an engagement ring. In 1991, when my mother remarried (my father having died in 1979), she passed it on to me, and if I don't lose it I will eventually pass it on to my niece. Green is calming, positive; symbolising growth, spring, hope; the nineteenth century signifier of 'inversion' and escape; and the colour of my eyes. It is one of my favourite colours.
I saw the airholes - you get extremely hot wearing a plastic shell - as analogous to air bubbles, so in order to heighten this effect, Jo added green phosphorescent paint to the steel washers which she had glued around the holes. She also outlined the dolphin in phosphorescent paint, as if it was leaping out of the water (the ocean being naturally phosphorescent) and added an eye: when stared at, the dolphin stares back.
I liked what Jo had done initially with the front of the brace, but felt that the gold shells which she included had a costume jewellery effect which was too femme for me. Continuing with the underwater theme, I saw this area of the brace as the bottom of the sea, with the mirrored glass and earring which I wanted very much to retain representing shipwrecked treasure or, more prosaically, broken bottles. I wanted to increase this effect and also to make the brace more personal, so gave Jo some shells that I had collected in Florida, which Jo painted green. To augment this I gave Jo my crystal collection, which would have the added advantage of giving the brace personalised good vibes. Since I could no longer carry my crystals in a trouser pocket, it made the brace more functional as well. To develop this aspect further, I asked Jo to turn a decorative loop attached to a shell into a functional loop to which I could attach keys or ID. As I could not wear trousers with pockets under the brace, or the 'bum-bag' in which I had been used to carrying a phone, Psion, shades and wallet the brace had further drained my identity; this was a small way of redressing the balance.
Although the nylon webbing straps which tied me into the brace were hideous, I did not want Jo to replace them because they had been riveted into the plastic. (If not, we would have opted for something with more of a SM feel, acknowledging the more kinky aspects of the brace's appearance.) To make the straps more comfortable, and to avoid the padding riding up over my shoulders and changing my silhouette still further, Jo stitched the padding under the straps, improving the overall appearance considerably.
When the rest of the brace was finished, though, it was obvious that the straps needed more work if they were to blend in. The fact that they were white also meant that they would get grubby quickly, and so would look even worse as time went on. Another friend of mine, Joy Wotton, is a devotee of Liberty, and supplied the answer in the shape of their trimmings counter. I found a plastic net ribbon there which reflects greens and oranges, rather like the CD, and which also has something of a fishing-net connotation. I stitched this by machine to the front of the straps, sewing the edges underneath by hand. I then painted the white buckles chrome, to contrast with the steel silver of the rest of the brace, and used the same paint on the leather which Jo had used to cover the original polystyrene padding on the edges of the brace.
I love having Jo's label, Kiss My Ass, on my left shoulder, particularly when people try to dis-able me. The fact that the label is made of aluminium means that it is hard and unyielding, reflecting its self-centred sentiment - other designer labels are soft and signify the display of yourself for the pleasure of others. The aluminium is also apt because the brace itself is inflexible, as are the needs which my impairment imposes. And it transforms the feminising effect of the brace from submissive to dominant: 'Miss' Gosling/Borg is now Mistress ju90/Cyborg. My brace now became my friend and my protector, the exterior mark of my interior pain, a removable, tattooed, exoskeleton, my armour.
Moving on to the exhibition as a whole. It's probably hard for non-disabled people to understand just how significant this project is. But if the non-disabled people here feel brave enough to look at their own fears of becoming disabled, you might realise that fear of impairment is only a small part of it. We are all capable of being able to live a full and happy life with impairments - it is within all of us to adapt to being in pain, for example, or not being able to walk, or hear, or see, or even talk.
However, what is actually very hard for anyone to cope with is the effects on our lives of the way in which society treats disabled people: the labelling of us as abnormal, defective, deformed, invalid, incapable, genderless, asexual or deviant; the refusal to recognise our right to live independently; the emotional, verbal and physical abuse - which often goes unnoticed, either because it has always been the norm for us, or because we accept society's judement of us and think that we deserve it; the lack of respect; the denial of full civil and human rights; the loss of income, the inadequate state benefits, the poverty (while we provide the raw material for a multi-billion dollar industry of the so-called 'able-bodied'); the badly designed buildings and transport systems; the avoidance, the social awkwardness, the patronising attitudes, the turning away; the stereotyping; the people who try to take advantage of you and control you; the people who regard you as lazy; the people who think that you could get 'better' if only you tried harder; the people who think that your life is less valuable, or indeed valueless; the people and institutions who write you off for no reason, often even before giving you a chance; the systems which say that your life should be open to inspection, classification and judgement; the religious who believe that you have sinned in the eyes of their gods; the rejection, the isolation, the institutionalisation . . . the lack of positive images. And the labelling of our anger at these and other injustices as unjustified, undesirable, sick, mad . . . and the condemnation, drugging, restraint and imprisonment that results when we protest.
I don't know anything about the history of disability aids, apart from the fact that the wheelchair was around in Roman times, although I intend to find out more over the next year or so in the run up to the main exhibition. But the disability aids that are around today provide a graphic illustration of the way in which disabled people are disabled by society rather than by our impairments - what we call the social model of disability.
The fact that disability aids are incredibly medical in appearance reflects first the way in which we are categorised by and reduced to our impairments by the Western medical system, in contrast to medical systems where an holistic philosophy is the norm. Second, their appearance reflects the fact that most disability aids are still produced or prescribed by the NHS or social services, and in many cases ownership still rests with the state rather than with the disabled person who uses them. Private purchases are very expensive and beyond the means of most disabled people, who have the lowest average incomes in the country - myths of generous state benefit systems and insurance policies notwithstanding.
Third, I think that their appearance reflects the fact that we are seen as being less than human, and so do not have the normal human desire to use objects that are aesthetically pleasing - however an individual conceives that. And lastly, I think that the appearance of today's disability aids reflects the way in which society regards us generally, which is as being in-valid and undeserving of anything better.
Yet when an aid is personalised, the person using the aid is revealed beneath the social identity, both to ourself and to the rest of society. And when we feel good about the way we look and have a strong sense of personal identity, our lives are enriched in every way. Some of the comments by disabled people which are reproduced in the exhibition illustrate that graphically.
The work here shows that disability aids cannot just be personalised, but can be beautiful, too, and indeed, can become objects of desire for everyone. I would love to own Nicola Becci's inhaler holder for women, even though I don't need to use my inhaler very often - although in fact, it would make me much more inclined to take it with me everywhere if I did own it, which for someone somewhere would inevitably be life-saving. Equally, I will be very interested to see how Disa Allsop's range of jewellery for people with hearing impairments develops over the next few months, even though I do not have a hearing impairment myself at present. I think that the use of pink plastic for traditional hearing aids brings up many of the same issues as the use of the original pink plastic of my brace, inasmuch as it pretends to be flesh despite the fact that no one will ever believe it to be. I find this especially puzzling in this case, given the wide range of earrings, earcuffs and studs with which the general population decorates itself already.
As a triped, I am, of course, particularly interested in Matthew Crawford and Tim Register's designs for crutches. I think that they are both rather wonderful in their different ways, and very much hope that Matthew manages to find a material with which he can realise his design successfully.
You've probably gathered that I am a sad fashion victim in many respects, but I know the distress that I felt until I was able to find clothing solutions when wearing the brace was very real, and I continue to find it difficult to obtain adult clothes in my size. But I can only imagine how I would feel if I could never get anything to fit unless it was made specially for me, or bought from one of the incredibly depressing catalogues of clothing supposedly designed for people, for example, who use wheelchairs. Therefore I will be very excited to see Freddie Robbins and Liz Rice's work as it develops. Similarly, I know how difficult I have found it to acquire footwear which is orthopaedically suitable for me, but still looks good. So I can relate in a small way to the pleasure that Helen Richards' designs must give those who are forced to rely on specialist orthopaedic shoe-makers.
In fact, it is not just a question of aesthetics where disability aids are concerned, but of poor design in general. For every designer who is a superb craftsperson in every way, save that they appear to have no aesthetic sense whatsoever, there are ten more whom one cannot believe ever managed to pass an Art Foundation Course.
Although I began living independently just over two years ago, it has only been this summer that my local social services department got round to assessing how my home environment could be made less disabling for me. Since, like most disabled people, I am on a very low income, I have had to wait for this, even though it has made daily life much more difficult than it need be, and I've had a number of falls which have been very frightening.
Anyway, I was expecting that the design solutions offered to me would be ugly, and of course they were. What I was not expecting, however, was just how poorly they would function. The raised toilet seat which was deemed to be one solution to my difficulties in using the bathroom is by its nature extremely unhygienic, and this in turn jeopardises my relationship with the home help on whom I rely. I still fail to see why all toilets cannot be made higher, since the current height makes them difficult for many, many people to use.
Marion Buus' glassware shows just what can be done here. As someone whose grip is affected and who is also visually impaired, I would absolutely love to own her designs - they are easy to hold, and easy to see, but they are also extremely beautiful. I have a wide collection of plastic beakers and goblets in my kitchen at home, but this is the first time that I have come across actual glasses that I could buy without worrying about dropping them or knocking them over and then cutting myself. But at the same time, they would look good on anyone's table, and any owner could feel confident that they could go on using them for the rest of their lives. The same is also true of Steve Harrison's ceramics.
Returning to my experiences with aids provided by the state, next there were the stools which would supposedly allow me to sit down while using the bathroom washbasin and the kitchen. Yes, they were ugly - only to be expected, unfortunately. Other than that, their raised height, tilted seat and strong arms would indeed have made my life easier - were it not for the fact that they were too heavy for me to be able to move. I therefore asked my occupational therapist for a lighter one, but she told me that, while a variety of makes are available, none are lighter. I then asked her how people with arthritis in their hands managed to use them, since people with arthritis make up a large proportion of the people who would find this aid useful, but she said that I was the only person ever to complain. I suspect that many of these stools lurk unused in the corners of kitchens and bathrooms around the country, their recipients - because of course we never become the owners - leading more difficult and dangerous lives than they need to, simply because they feel unable to complain for fear that they are deemed to be incapable of living independently.
Then there was the seat which fitted across the bath, supposedly allowing me to have a shower when I could not get into the bath itself. It would have worked . . . .apart from the fact that, again, it was too heavy for me to move. Since fibreglass has existed for long enough for even a disability aid designer to be aware that it exists, I suspect that the weight reflects the fact that many so-called aids to independent living were actually designed to be used in residential homes, where disabled and elderly people are forced to be completely dependent on others. In fact they did subsequently find a light enough bath seat for me, but then took it away again because my Council expects all disabled people to pay for these so-called “small” items ourselves.
Again, it is probably hard for non-disabled people to realise just how reliant disabled people can be on well-designed furniture in daily life. But Michael Malig has shown a great awareness of the issues involved, and his furniture, in contrast to the designs that are commercially available, is functional, liberating and aesthetically pleasing. It's wonderful, too, that it has been produced for children, who really are at the sharp end of disabilism in our society.
It should, of course, be shocking that all the work in “Adorn, Equip” is so significant. But it is, and thanks must be given to the City Gallery for organising the exhibition, and for their commitment to it as the long-term project which, because of the fact that it is needed at all, it has to be. It can only be viewed, of course, in the nature of a catwalk show - it bears the same relationship to what we hope is the future of disability aids as the clothes that are shown at fashion shows bear to what we actually buy in the High Street. But it reveals the possibilities and pushes the boundaries in a way which is truly ground-breaking.
However, I'm going to finish with a word of warning.When I was a child, and particularly when I was a teenager, I hated wearing glasses because of the very limited and medicalised choice of styles available, and because of the verbal and physical abuse that was associated with being marked as visually impaired. Today, market forces have ensured that glasses have become fashion accessories, due to the fact that, in the UK, glasses are now manufactured by private companies rather than the National Health Service. The development of contact lenses has also meant that visual impairments can be disguised. In one sense, therefore, the disabling effects of my visual impairments have now disappeared.
Unfortunately, though, what has also happened is that the State has almost entirely abandoned responsibility for providing glasses, even to those who have no money and who have a significant degree of visual impairment. And in order to keep prices down, those who need strong and/or complex prescriptions have to pay very dearly for them. In my case, the contact lenses which would help me to see the best would cost me £200 every six months, and of course I can't afford that. In fact, I had to wear my last pair of lenses for two years before I could even afford the cheapest pair of new lenses, thus risking my entire eyesight. Equally, the glasses that I would need would cost me £300 for the lenses alone, so I have been wearing the same pair for five years, even though they became scratched and in any case I needed a new prescription more than three years ago.
I find it profoundly depressing not to be able to see as well as I am able to, particularly as a visual artist, and would now give anything for access to one of my old NHS pairs which may have been ugly, and which may have been so heavy that I had permanent running sores behind my ears when I was a child, but which did actually allow me to see properly.
Unfortunately, the same phenomenon is now occurring with regard to wheelchairs. Despite advances in wheelchair design and technology, the State will only provide you with an electric wheelchair for indoor use. If you want to go out, you must use a manual wheelchair design which is extremely heavy, and therefore reduces most users to depending on others to push it even if they could manage a more modern design themselves. Those who can, therefore, continue to walk with difficulty if this is possible at all, or somehow find the money for one of the newer, lighter manual chairs or one of the wide range of all-purpose electric chairs. Because the demand is now coming from the user rather than the State, wheelchair manufacturers have responded with a range of better and more aesthetically pleasing designs. But the unnoticed casualties have been all of those disabled people who therefore can't use them independently at all.
In my own case, after many years of being able to benefit from one but being without it, I am now, finally, getting an all-purpose electric chair which is being paid for by the Job Centre. That will be great, although its usefulness would be much greater if there was accessible public transport and buildings to allow me to use it more often than I will be able to. But I am only getting it to enable me to work - if I was bringing up children, or looking after my elderly mother, or had retired from work, I would not be deemed to be making a contribution to society which would merit that assistance. And I think that's very, very wrong.
So, we need to find a way forward which not only takes in issues of aesthetics and good design, but which allows all disabled people to have control over and ownership of their aids whatever their income and economic status.
That's a lot of issues to take in, but I hope that we can now go on to have a discussion about some of them, at least.
© The City Gallery, Leicester and the artists: 2001
This site was built by Ju Gosling aka ju90 during an artist's residency at Oriel 31 in November 2001