Abnormal: Towards a Scientific Model of Disability

Towards a Scientific Model of Disability

This is a digital photographic image, manipulated to look, on close examination, more like a painting. An olive-skinned woman with a mild spinal curvature is standing sideways on to the onlooker, against a white background. She is dressed in a white sports bra and briefs, with her feet together and her hands at her sides. On her left shoulder is a tattoo in bright red-orange colours of a fox's head, and there is a chain bracelet on her left wrist. She has very short dark red hair, but her features are obscured by a fake fur mask of a fox's head, fixed by a white band around the back of her head. Behind her, her shadow is animalistic and vaguely threatening. In the bottom left corner of the image, the word 'Abnormal' is stamped out in black capital letters in an old-fashioned typewriter-like print. There are similarities between this pose and the traditional poses of disabled people in medical photographs.

Abnormal 1: Lambda print on aluminium. © ju90.07

Welcome to the Abnormal website, which functions as an online catalogue for the Abnormal exhibition.

Abnormal resulted from my artist's residency at the National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), which took place between 2006 - 2007. Funded by the Wellcome Trust, the residency explored ideas about normality, and asked whether there is a 'Scientific Model of Disability' that is distinct from the 'Medical Model of Disability'?

Click here to find out more about the background to the residency.

Click here to read conversations between myself and the research scientists Malcolm Logan and Evelien Gevers.

Click here to read my thoughts on what a Scientific Model of Disability might look like.

Click here to view images from the accompanying exhibition, which opened on 31 January 2008 at NIMR, and to read my comments about the process that went into creating them.

Click here to read about the people and organisations who have supported this project.

NB: You will find these links on the top right-hand corner of every page of this site.

The Abnormal exhibition is now touring the United Kingdom, and will shortly be coming to a gallery near you. Click here for tour dates and further information. Click here to read Ju Gosling's Abnormal Conversation with Professor Jim Hunter, Deputy Principal, Arts Institute Bournemouth.

Click here to find out how to receive a free exhibition badge and mirror

Click here to read or sign the Electronic Guest Book

Click here to read the visitors' comments from the Abnormal venues

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