Bruno Booth takes audiences on an adventure through his socially engaged practice and immersive humorous installations that challenge audiences to navigate architecture from the perspective of a wheelchair user.
AUDIO DESCRIPTION
Next Wave, Broadcast. A captioned video featuring artist Bruno Booth – a white man in his 30s who uses a manual wheelchair. Bruno has close-cropped brown hair that falls in a short feathery fringe, wide grey eyes, and tattoos trailing up his arms. He wears a black t-shirt with “Hungry Like the Wolf” printed on it in white English and Japanese text, and grey pants that hang loose from the edge of his chair. Bruno is digitally edited into different scenes as he talks, sitting on the back of a police boat, or glitched over with neon yellow snow. The video also features footage of Bruno in a blue singlet wheeling across a forest floor where the leaves on the trees snap from red to pink to teal.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Bruno Booth is an emerging artist with a physical disability based in Fremantle, WA in the first few years of his practice. He works across the mediums of painting, social engagement, sculpture, video and installation. He was an artist in residence at the Perth Institute for Contemporary Arts (PICA) in 2017and has been selected for the FAC (Fremantle Arts Centre) Artist in Residence program from September – December 2019, Next Wave 2020 (as a Next Wave X artist), the City of Joondalup Invitation Art Award and the First Draft 2019 -2020 Exhibition program. His new works are inspired by the navigational challenges he faces as a wheelchair user and the under-representation of disabled people in popular culture.
Produced by Anita Spooner
Fayen d’Evie considers the radical potential of blindness and the possibility of ‘access intimacy’ through embodied, tactile experiences of art.
AUDIO DESCRIPTION
The visual imagery in this video layers fragments of print works with close ups of the artist and collaborators handling works in progress. Fingertips, a pursed mouth, lips blowing, a cane swinging. The visual affect of the video is a shifting kaleidoscope, oriented through visual instability and hallucination. The visual imagery need not be perceived for this video to be experienced fully. Conversely, the sonic narrative need not be heard for this video to be experienced fully. This might sound contradictory, but reflects the artist’s conviction that her practice can be approached from any perceptual position.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Fayen d’Evie is an artist and writer. Her projects are often collaborative, and resist spectatorship by activating audiences in sensory conversations and embodied readings of artworks. Fayen is the founder of 3-ply, and the co-founder of the Museum Incognita with Katie West.
Produced by Anita Spooner
Artist Luke Duncan King creates a series of distorted portraits of people lip reading to explore the challenges of communication as a deaf person.
AUDIO DESCRIPTION
Next Wave, Broadcast. A captioned video featuring Deaf artist Luke Duncan King, who uses Auslan (Australian Sign Language). An English transcript of Luke’s message follows this description. Luke is a white man in his 30s who has very short strawberry blond hair a short, curly fringe, and blond stubble across his jaw. He wears a mustard yellow jumper over a white t-shirt, a silver necklace with a sparkly circular charm, a single gold hoop earring, and gold rings. Throughout the video, footage of Luke is intercut with slow-motion clips of people talking, their mouths obscured by pixelation, grain, or blur. Sometimes, the lips are clearly visible, but the speech that’s heard doesn’t match the mouthshapes shown.
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, my name is Luke Duncan King. I am a visual artist. I work predominantly in printmaking and drawing, focusing on portraiture. You might be wondering why I’m signing. Auslan is my first language, as I am deaf. My ideas have changed over time. My work is always linked to portraiture. I look at the outside world and how it has it’s influences on me. The outside world almost becomes like a reflection. From afar when you look at someone you make assumptions of them. But when you get closer and get to know them your assumptions tend to change. I can’t hear people. I can’t listen to their conversations. People never ask what’s best for me. They just ask me to change, ask me to lip read. Anyone who tries to lip read is likely to only understand 30 percent of a message that is being spoken. I work closely with deaf and hearing subjects. That collaboration is really important. Next Wave have encouraged me not to be frightened and to show the language of our culture and to show the difference between our two worlds. Focussing on the lips, I want the audience to experience lip reading when speech is blurred, slow or too fast, and sort of remove that power from them, and remove their options. I never meet artists who have been reluctant about the notion of disability. I have a linguistic communication disability and that’s my identity. I’m Luke, I’m an artist and I’m deaf. The art world is not always inclusive. I would like people in the art space to be open minded, to be aware of what’s right for us, rather than what’s best for them. Because deaf people can do everything everyone else can do, we just can’t hear. You don’t have to learn to sign. You only need to appreciate it, have trust, be open minded, and that stems from the right attitude. But how to teach that? It’s hard. But don’t be frightened to ask what’s best for us.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Luke Duncan King is a visual artist, whose practice is grounded in printmaking & drawing, but extends into video, performance and other artforms. He has an interest in collaboration, and has performed or co-created works with choreographers, dancers, performers, filmmakers and other visual artists, in public and private museums and galleries. Luke participated the Next Wave Kickstart program in 2017 and he held an exhibition at Bus Projects part of the Next Wave art festival in 2018. Luke is a co-founder with Geoff Riding of Magic Hands, which teaches Deaf-led classes in beginner and intermediate Auslan. Luke completed a BFA (Hons) at the VCA in 2015.
Produced by Anita Spooner
Fayen d’Evie, Broadcast Episode 2 freeze frame, 2019.