Domestic Landscapes by Zoe Partington
Exhibition:
Domestic Landscapes is a physical and online interactive installation that uncovers and shares the hidden stories of domesticity and isolation of a diverse group of disabled women.
The installation uses accessible sound and audio description language including British Sign Languages (BSL) with creative support from Sign Dance Collective International SDC through creative and collaborative working, treating them playfully and creatively to tell the stories in a way that gives focus to these accessible formats, rather than using them to simply support the visual elements.
Artist Background:
As an artist my work explores critical thinking in relation to my experiences as a disabled person. Artistically over the last year, I have used my creative time to reflect on my previous installation’s. I have explored my own impairment since being diagnosed in 1973 when a pertinent moment/object became a metaphor for my life and the facets which generated an artistic journey through domestic objects as multi-layered metaphors, these recently have become more powerful. Using ‘artistic audio description’, has allowed me to expand into non-visual experimentation of the visual through language, stories, sound and colours. The collaborative nature of my work has taken me on a creative journey to balancing rhythm, sound and words. It is about combining or shifting my creative skills in audio description to a higher level of producing an artistic interpretation of these facets, to create an art work, which connects many audiences or can just be an experience which allows the visitor/audience to reflect.
Zoe has been developing her work with funding from Arts Council England, Shape Arts and Unlimited touring her show and commission for a show in Madrid, featuring work by disabled women in October 2022. Her intervention ‘Domestic Landscapes’ is a live digital platform, to share untold oral stories of disabled women, the installation will be experienced as the visitor enters the room and experiences a cacophony of whispers linked to a piano keyboard. The piano keyboard is important as it uncovers another story from a ‘disability aesthetic’, of blind people being piano tuners or physiotherapists in the past with little choice for other careers.
Zoe is continuing to develop this idea created in partnership with other organisations and a curator in Madrid initially the idea was a playful perspective, and now its an interactive digital installation for audiences- she captures the insights of disabled women, domesticity and isolation through vintage objects as metaphors for a blend of poetic alternate languages and hidden lives. She is exploring an interplay between object, movement, sound and tensions. She explores the way we interact with art objects or installations and she experiments with unusual and alternative means of powering the work. She represents the domestic landscape as not only in rural but in urban and domestic settings. It highlights through dialogue the hidden lives and insecurities perpetuated by society of disabled peoples lives. She is using audio description to unravel visual imagery for blind and partially sighted audiences in her work to ensure blind people can be part of the ‘visual experience’ in a different guise. She is building an archive of stories, snippets and inside perspectives from disabled women in a digital gallery and in physical spaces.
Domestic Landscapes is a physical and online interactive installation that uncovers and shares the hidden stories of domesticity and isolation of a diverse group of disabled women.
The installation uses accessible sound and audio description language including British Sign Languages (BSL) with creative support from Sign Dance Collective International SDC through creative and collaborative working, treating them playfully and creatively to tell the stories in a way that gives focus to these accessible formats, rather than using them to simply support the visual elements.
Artist Background:
As an artist my work explores critical thinking in relation to my experiences as a disabled person. Artistically over the last year, I have used my creative time to reflect on my previous installation’s. I have explored my own impairment since being diagnosed in 1973 when a pertinent moment/object became a metaphor for my life and the facets which generated an artistic journey through domestic objects as multi-layered metaphors, these recently have become more powerful. Using ‘artistic audio description’, has allowed me to expand into non-visual experimentation of the visual through language, stories, sound and colours. The collaborative nature of my work has taken me on a creative journey to balancing rhythm, sound and words. It is about combining or shifting my creative skills in audio description to a higher level of producing an artistic interpretation of these facets, to create an art work, which connects many audiences or can just be an experience which allows the visitor/audience to reflect.
Zoe has been developing her work with funding from Arts Council England, Shape Arts and Unlimited touring her show and commission for a show in Madrid, featuring work by disabled women in October 2022. Her intervention ‘Domestic Landscapes’ is a live digital platform, to share untold oral stories of disabled women, the installation will be experienced as the visitor enters the room and experiences a cacophony of whispers linked to a piano keyboard. The piano keyboard is important as it uncovers another story from a ‘disability aesthetic’, of blind people being piano tuners or physiotherapists in the past with little choice for other careers.
Zoe is continuing to develop this idea created in partnership with other organisations and a curator in Madrid initially the idea was a playful perspective, and now its an interactive digital installation for audiences- she captures the insights of disabled women, domesticity and isolation through vintage objects as metaphors for a blend of poetic alternate languages and hidden lives. She is exploring an interplay between object, movement, sound and tensions. She explores the way we interact with art objects or installations and she experiments with unusual and alternative means of powering the work. She represents the domestic landscape as not only in rural but in urban and domestic settings. It highlights through dialogue the hidden lives and insecurities perpetuated by society of disabled peoples lives. She is using audio description to unravel visual imagery for blind and partially sighted audiences in her work to ensure blind people can be part of the ‘visual experience’ in a different guise. She is building an archive of stories, snippets and inside perspectives from disabled women in a digital gallery and in physical spaces.