06/02/25 - MIMA: Land and Accessibility

06th February 2025

Research: A Gallery Visit to Encounter Access

This afternoon, I visited MIMA, my local gallery 'institution,' accompanied by my first-year students to explore the current exhibitions. My intention was to help the students gain insight into curation, presentation, and conceptual work beyond just photography, hoping to spark inspiration for their final academic projects. The exhibitions on display were Towards New Worlds on the ground floor and a collection of Winifred Nicholson's rugs on the second floor.

I was particularly drawn to Towards New Worlds, which showcased fifteen artists who are either deaf, disabled, or neurodiverse. Through various multidisciplinary practices, the artists conveyed their experiences of seeing, hearing, feeling, and sensing the contemporary world. The exhibition aimed to bridge the internal worlds of the artists with their external environments. It used photography, video, installation, sculpture, and interactive stories to challenge normative perceptions and highlight the complexities of disability.

I found the exhibition both insightful and impactful, fostering a meaningful dialogue on how I might reconsider disability and access within my research. The landscapes I explore often aren't accessible to individuals with certain physical or mental conditions. This prompted a reflection on inclusivity and access as I think about how landscapes are experienced by different bodies.

The first work that captured my attention was The Other Shore by Małgorzata Dawidek. The piece consists of prints and drawings with collage elements, transitioning between spaces within each image. It incorporates aerial and ground photographs of the River Tees, historical maps, and microscopic images of locally mined raw potash and medicinal potassium. Dawidek’s work forms a profound connection between the local landscape, the minerals and matter beneath it, and the human bodies that inhabit the area.

The artist explores her reliance on potassium-based medication derived from potash. To represent areas of her body affected by potassium deficiency, she placed stones collected from three locations across the river on corresponding parts of the body in the artwork.

What captivated me was the blend of aerial, micro, and traditional landscape imagery arranged in multiple positions throughout the work. The integration of historical maps provides a sense of place and delves into the mining histories and extraction complexities. Dawidek's relationship with these materials introduces a tension between the audience's perspectives on the landscape and the artist's reliance on its resources for survival.

RA Walden's work also stood out, prompting me to reflect on my own movement and freedom within landscapes. The first piece I encountered was Remedial Geologies IV, a wall-mounted light installation made of 8mm clear glass tubing. Presented as a neon 'sign' in the form of a rocky landscape, the tubing was filled with argon gas, casting a soft blue glow against the light blue wall.

The minimalism of the piece reminded me of artists like Bruce Nauman and Dan Flavin, who pioneered light as an art form during the 1960s minimalist movement. However, Walden’s work moves beyond aesthetic celebration. It addresses the inaccessibility of certain landscapes due to disability. While natural landscapes are often promoted for their health benefits through green initiatives and NHS prescriptions, not everyone can access these spaces.

Walden's placement of argon gas inside the glass tubing serves as a symbolic gesture, an attempt to capture a natural element from the landscape and reimagine it within an accessible context. I appreciated this inventive approach to incorporating natural gases into a sculptural form, transforming it into a representation far removed from traditional 'green' structures.

Walden’s second piece, part of the ongoing series Crip Ecologies, Archive, featured a collection of glass jars and petri dishes containing natural materials donated by others. The collection included flowers, soil, leaves, stones, seeds, fruit, and herbs. This work further emphasised his exploration of inaccessibility with nature while celebrating the meticulous process of collecting, preserving, and archiving micro-elements of landscapes.

The piece highlights the durational and collective efforts required to build or represent fragments of various landscapes. Walden’s experience as a disabled artist underscores the freedoms often taken for granted by those without physical or mental challenges.

The exhibition features Richard Butchins, Leah Clements, Joanne Coates, Małgorzata Dawidek, Colin Hambrook, Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen, Seo Hye Lee, Molly Martin, Louise McLachlan, Aaron McPeake, Sam Metz, Jade de Montserrat, Carrie Ravenscroft, Christopher Samuel and RA Walden.

The exhibition runs until 16th February, and I highly recommend it. Just a word of caution — don’t ring the bells too hard, or you might face the wrath of the consistently grumpy curator!

MIMA. (2024). Towards New Worlds. [Online]. MIMA. Available at: https://mima.art/exhibition/towards-new-worlds/ [Accessed 6 February 2025].