WORKSHOP SERIES (2000); POSTERS AND VINYL BANNER EXHIBITED AT THE IDEAS FESTIVAL AND BOND UNIVERSITY (2001)

Queensland’s Access Arts invited Visionary Images to conduct a short series of intensive workshops with people with disabilities to create images about their experiences and aspirations. The common experience of being seen as their disability led to many in the group sharing their own stories of feeling powerless in the community and particularly in institutional care. Participants agreed that it was the way their disability was seen by other people that was most disabling, rather than the way they experienced their disability. Over a five-day period, this consideration fuelled the group’s production of text and photographic portraits.

Three photographic images were selected for 
final production, and the text ‘Bound by Your Ignorance’ accompanied each of the images: a close-up of a face covered by a net mask, a young man’s crouching body bound by rope, and a man bound face, hands and torso in a wheelchair. These works challenged viewers with the reality that people experiencing disabilities are often bound by others’ perceptions of them rather than by their disability.

The “Bound by Your Ignorance’ finished artwork and developmental works were exhibited at the Brisbane Powerhouse as part of the inaugural Ideas Festival. One of the works was also exhibited as a large-scale vinyl skin on the building’s façade. The exhibition then travelled to Bond University in November 2001.