Ju Gosling aka ju90

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. Ju works largely within the theories and traditions of the Disability Arts movement, and has gained an international reputation.

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 publishing and 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 Ju's exhibitions, commissions etc.

Ju's national touring Abnormal exhibition climaxed at the Royal College of Surgeons' Hunterian Museum in London from 15 September 2011-14 January 2012, while her Canning Town Folk exhibition was at Cecil Sharp House, the HQ of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS), from 27 September until 4 December 2011. In November 2011 Ju launched the Folk in Motion project at EFDSS, reinventing folk dancing for wheelchair users, which received the London 2012 Inspire mark in January 2012.

In February 2011 Ju worked with Fittings Multimedia Arts at Croydon Clocktower with Sputnik: A Project of Possibilities, and made a short film, Fellow Traveller, which she later presented in Glasgow at Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre's (the makers of Sputnik) 15th birthday celebrations. In July 2011 Ju released the website version of her gallery piece No Hope of Rescue, exploring human interference in emergency systems and cultural concepts of rescue.

In 2010, Ju's lightbox installation Perception I-IV (see below) was shown at the Bluecoat Gallery from 20 November to 3 December as part of 'Objects of Curiosity and Desire' at DaDaFest International Festival. In September 2010 Ju co-produced a poetry, film and chill-out 'pop up' club, Red Jesus, at the Liberty Festival in Trafalgar Square in tribute to the late David Morris, the Mayor of London's disability adviser. With the artist Katherine Araniello she is now setting up a formal organisation to take forward David's work.

In 2008 Ju completed a part-time 18-month 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 before touring nationally until 2012 with further support from Wellcome. An accompanying website provides an online version of the exhibition and documents the residency as a whole. Ju has also spoken about the work at a number of conferences, including the Australian Network of Arts and Technology's Super Human: Revolution of the Species symposium in Melbourne in November 2009 where she was a keynote speaker - click here to read her presentation.

Ju's other recent work includes The Letter Writing Project, a creative response to Lee Mingwei's The Letter Writing Project at the 2009 Edinburgh Festival's Enlightenments exhibition. This work challenges the inaccessibility of the fine art world to disabled artists and art lovers. From 2006-2010 Ju was the artist-adviser to/artist-in-residence at the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive at Holton Lee in Dorset with architects Sarah Wigglesworth, and has documented this in her Holton Lee Blog.

In 2008 Ju was appointed as an Associate of the New Work Network, leading on diversity. In September her film England, exploring issues of immigration, identity and Englishness through the eyes of a child footballer from London's East End, was premiered at the A Foundation, Liverpool on 6 September 2008 and was then exhibited as an installation within the Life and Liberty exhibition at Westbourne Grove Church from September - October. In 2008 Ju also 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. Other past projects have included:

• Men in White Coats A performative installation commissioned by the ESC Labor Gallery in Graz, Austria as part of the Steirischer Herbst festival in October 2008. The installation is is now included with the Abnormal touring exhibition.
• 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 five dance artists — Milli Bitterli, Rika Esser, Ju Gosling, Raimund Hoghe and Simon Versnel — who use physical vulnerability within their work. The resulting film by Gitta Gsell, Augen Blicke N, was televised in Switzerland on 26/12/2005, and a book by Gesa Ziemer was published in January 2008.
• 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. The work was remade for DaDaFest International 2010 in Liverpool in November.
• 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, and is now included with the Abnormal touring exhibition.
• 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. Print versions of the accompanying projections are now included with the Abnormal touring exhibition.
• 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 which re-opened in New York in January 2008.

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, and co-chairs Regard, the national LGBT disabled people's organisation. For full details of Ju's career, see her CV. Click here to view selected press and publicity.

Photo: Bob Jones/Gaze