Ju Gosling, aka ju90, is a 40-something disabled webmaster and multimedia storyteller who works mainly with digital lens-based media, but also with performance, text and sound. Raised in the marshlands of Essex and originally trained as a dancer, Ju has been based in London's Docklands since the mid-1980s, although she spent 18 months living and working in Cornwall while she was completing her PhD. Ju has also worked extensively in the media, having begun her career as a fanzine editor. Click here to read a full biography, and click here to read a list of exhibitions, commissions etc.

Ju works largely within the theories and traditions of the disability arts movement, and has gained an international reputation. She recently completed a part-time artist's residency at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), funded by the Wellcome Trust. The resulting exhibition, Abnormal: Towards a Scientific Model of Disability opened at NIMR on 31 January 2008 and ran for eight weeks; it is shortly to tour nationally. An accompanying website provides an online version of the exhibition and documents the residency as a whole.

Ju is currently working as the artist-adviser to/artist-in-residence at the new National Disability Arts Collection and Archive at Holton Lee in Dorset, with architects Sarah Wigglesworth. You can read more about this residency in Ju's Holton Lee Blog. She has also been appointed as an Associate of the New Work Network for 2008. Ju's latest film, England, explores issues of immigration, identity and Englishness through the eyes of a child footballer from London's East End. Ju also recently re-released Put Ya Filas On!, where teenagers from the East End put their trainers through their paces and discuss how peer pressure affects their fashion 'choices' - shot in 1991, it is just as relevant today.

In 2004 Ju was awarded an Artsadmin Digital Media Fellowship for Disabled and Deaf Artists.

Recent projects include:

• Opening Doors A film-dance installation commissioned by Bradford City Council to celebrate European Year of Disabled People. Opening Doors, performed with Lee Elliott, was projected as an installation for a week in Bradford Centenary Square in January 2004. It has also been screened at the National Film Theatre as part of the 2004 London Disability Film Festival, and at The Other Film Festival in Melbourne, Australia in 2004; the Picture This film festival in Calgary, Canada in 2005; and the AbilityFest film festival, India in 2007.
  Vulnerable Places A research project at the University of Art and Design in Zurich, featuring dance artists who use physical vulnerability within their work. The resulting film, Augen Blicke N, was televised on 26 December 2005.
  Perception I-IV A series of digitally manipulated photographic self-portraits printed on film and mounted on light boxes and made in response to Matisse's Nu de Dos (funded by London Arts' Innovate fund in 2003). A print version of this work was shown in 'Connections 3: Exposed' at the Joseph D. Carrier Gallery in Toronto in October/November 2007.
• Helping the Handicapped A web-based artwork commissioned by the Sinnlos festival in Graz, Austria as part of the Cultural Capital of Europe 2003 programme. Ju also gave a lecture about her work in Graz on 18 June 2003. A print version of this work was shown in the 'Humans Being' exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center in April/May 2006.
• Wheels on Fire Commissioned by the Science Museum and Apples and Snakes as part of the Naked Science programme, and performed by Ju as part of "Faltered States" at London's Science Museum on 21 March 2003 (repeated at Battersea Arts Centre on 28 March 2003). Wheels on Fire has since been performed in Zurich and Austria as well as in Bimingham and Coventry, and is still available for booking.
  Transformations Ju's first solo exhibition took place at Oval House Theatre as part of the Xposure London Disability Arts Festival in November 2003. During the festival she also produced live visuals for the Drake Music Project's EQ3 performance at Croydon Clocktower.
  

In 2001 Ju completed Fight, a film-dance installation exploring the disabled body and movement, performed with Layla Smith (funded by London Arts' Combined Arts Fund and Leicester City Gallery). Fight toured for 13 months as part of the Adorn, Equip touring exhibition originated by Leicester City Gallery, and was then presented at a weekend of artists' films during the 2002 Xposure London Disability Arts Festival. In February 2002 Ju also gave a keynote speech about the work at the Dancing Differently? conference in Manchester, organised by the Community Dance Foundation, and in November she presented the work at the Shifting Aesthetics conference in London. After the exhibition closed, in 2003 Fight was exhibited in Austria as part of the Sinnlos Festival, at the Blue Coat Gallery in Liverpool as part of DaDaFest, and at the Eco Centre in Mile End Park as part of the Identity exhibition. Fight has also been screened at The Other Film Festival in Melbourne in 2004 and the Picture This film festival in Calgary in 2005. In June 2007 Fight was exhibited at the Kennedy Center Terrace Gallery in Washington DC as part of the Renascence 07 digital art show.

Ju's Home Page site - really a collection of sites - includes My Not-So-Secret Life as a Cyborg, a website exploring the social construction of disability through performance art, illustrated with a number of self-portraits inspired by the work of Frida Kahlo. In 1999 Ju presented this work on Sky TV's The Lounge; at the 5th International Performance Studies Conference, the 2nd International Interdisciplinary Conference on Women and Health and the Women's Studies Network (UK) Conference; and at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki where it received national media coverage. My Not-So-Secret Life as a Cyborg was also included in the Adorn, Equip work-in-progress exhibition at Leicester City Gallery in September 1999, where Ju gave the exhibition talk. In 2000 the work was presented at the Institute of Contemporary Arts as part of the Mardi Gras Arts Festival, and at Jacksons Lane as part of their disability arts festival. This work is currently being written about internationally in essays/dissertations/PhD theses, and also receives email from all over the world - from disabled people, artists, medical professionals, academics . . . and orthopaedic fetishists.

In autumn 1999 Ju completed a virtual residency at Mount Grace Priory, an English Heritage site in Yorkshire, collaborating with an onsite artist, Rita Sheppard, to create a temporary, site-specific installation. This residency was organised by The Art House, and funded by English Heritage, Yorkshire Arts and the Arts Council of England. In 2000 Ju presented this work at the Arts Council's conference Access Denied? at Sadlers Wells (part of the Get Wired conference series on new technology and the arts).

In 1998 Ju completed a PhD in Communication & Image Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury, specialising in hypermedia and presenting her thesis, Virtual Worlds of Girls - on girl power, girls' school stories and the future of reading in an electronic age - as a website/CD Rom plus a one-hour film. The website has been on virtual exhibition at London's Cyberia Cafe, reviewed in The Times and The Guardian, and featured on Sky TV's Download. It has also been hotlinked to and attracts email from all over the world. Ju has presented the work at a number of conferences and literary events. The accompanying film, The Chalet School Revisited, was premiered at the Lux Cinema in London in November 1998, and was described by Roland Keating, then Editor of BBC2's Bookmark series, as: 'A remarkable illustration of what the latest technology makes possible, and an enjoyably informative documentary in its own right.' The project is now being distributed by Cinenova and Bettany Press.

Ju is also a director of Bettany Press and Soundstorm Productions. For full details of Ju's career, see her CV. Click here to view selected press and publicity.

Photo: Bob Jones/Gaze