Artist and wordsmith, whose work engages with issues of access, from acknowledged physical needs to perceived symbolic exclusions. After being selected as one of DAO's New Voices in 2011, Gini's online presence has become an integral part of her arts practice

Creative Asia

22 May 2012

Blog

Ok. I've been here 6 days, this is blog number 5, they all sat frustrated, unposted, on my iPad while I attempted to master the technology using unfamiliar tools. How do I monitor the size of my images? Resize? Crop? How do I convert .png to .jpg? I guess I will have figured it when I post this, but the Greenroom blog will be out of sync with my tweet... I may use wheels to augment my body; I may long for a cybersuit, or an avatar, so that I can run and climb and swish a skirt, I enjoy using...

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Settling in

19 May 2012

Blog

Smooth as a financial manager, Sumida reflects my sunshine hopes back at me in a glassy smile. Tokyo, gateway to Utopia, or the crutch to support my fantasies? Is the promise of independence sweeter than the realisation? Is the realisation realistic, or merely my wheelborne take on the impossible dream? Humanity seems to possess a built-in hunger for the impossible dream, and living in an age where the dream becomes increasingly universal, and increasingly focused on bodily perfection, I am...

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For better or worse

11 April 2012

Blog

 I'm planning my next trip to Japan and I hope this time to be bringing back my very own skinny-wheeled chair. Will it actually make a difference to my life? Being in Japan opened my eyes to the realisation that I have accepted too many restrictions without questions; shouldered the burden of inequality as if I deserved it and run out of energy to care. When I acquired my first manual wheelchair, I was overwhelmed with emotion. The gift of mobility was magical and although it took months...

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More on visibility…

25 February 2012

Blog

I've been thinking more about visibility since Wednesday when I watched a fantastic performance by StopGAP. In dance, the wheelchair attempts to shed its magical cloaking properties and without it a dancer’s personal space shrinks to that required by skin and bone.  Dancer Laura Jones set me thinking about my own special relationship with metal, rubber and memory foam. Never having worked with a wheelchair before, choreographer Thomas Noone took Laura's away. And enabled the...

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The creative case for … visibility.

22 February 2012

Blog

I’m finding communication hard at the moment; a familiar phrase that I read recently has rattled around in my head until I googled it: I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. This is Ralf Ellison writing about Negroness, but could just as well be me. Or could it? Because my own visibility is invariably surrounded by the negative visibility of my wheelchair I do often forget that when using it, I am invisible. We share my personal space and its easy to forget...

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The View From Here exhibition: too much honesty?

2 December 2011

Blog

Sitting in Residence at Salisbury Arts Centre, talking to loads of interesting people is fascinating. I wanted people to be honest with their personal responses and gut reactions, and have been frequently taken by surprise at just how much honesty I'm getting. I had this conversation with a young person as we were surrounded by Martin Bruch's Bruchlandungen: How I relate to this is really uncomfortable. Like, these are the important bits of your life, yeh? And these are the bits I throw away,...

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Revealing the view from here...

14 November 2011

Blog

The View from Here is at Salisbury Arts Centre from 10 Nov to 23 Dec 2011   My intervention is going well. My approach is proactive and flexible which has allowed the project scope to expand. Very few of the visitors to the Arts Centre feel they have a journey which relates to the exhibition, but probably about 80% of them are happy to contribute their words and thoughts to this fast growing body of work. Striking! Noticed it at once. Had to bend down; its child height. Then I saw the...

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Disabled - so what?

26 September 2011

Blog

I’ve written two blogs since day out in Chichester and not posted either of them, my self-preservation instinct over-riding everything. I need to overcome this paranoia. My fear is real, but what about the threat? The instinct to hide is a relic from my “dinosaur brain”. Threatened, like the wounded animal, I seek isolation, and I am so easily made complicit in my own marginalisation. Integrate. Hide. They shout from behind the barricade of “Normal.” Is this...

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