FLUX/US at Tate Exchange

Drop in and connect with art in a new and exciting way at FLUX/US. 

From 21-24 March 2019, Shape's third Tate Exchange programme 'FLUX/US: Be part of the art' will feature a series of workshops, interactive installations and events looking at how people interact with and produce art that discusses disability.

Enter the Crip Casino and try your luck at a game of risk and reward in a wildly fun immersive experience. Will you win a prize, and do you deserve to keep it?

Encounter a soundscape from an unexpected source and think about your relationship with sound in Many Shapes of Volumes. Can you draw something you hear or experience?

Visualize and rate your feelings as you encounter an ever-changing neon-light scale of wellness with My Body Is The House That I Live In. How do you think about well-being? How do you feel?

Pore over our Zine Library by disabled artists and learn about this thriving culture creating accessible print for anyone and everyone. Make your own lo-fi creation alongside our artists and take home your own work of art.

Chat with us on Friday 22 March in a conversation to discuss thoughts and ideas on how to produce a sustainable practice as an emerging disabled artist in this current climate. This is a ticketed event, full details can be found here.

Join us for a chance to explore your own creativity, in a space where life is art and everyone is an artist! Anything goes! 

This week-long programme of events is free, accessible and for all ages. We will have a comfortable and quiet resting space. Headphones and ear plugs will be available if you want to engage in different noise conditions, as well as communication badges. Tate Modern's access details can be found here, please scroll to 'Accessibility'. 

We particularly welcome your feedback on how we might be more inclusive to you. If you have any specific access requirements please contact Sara Dziadik or call 02074247330.

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Crip Casino

Abi Palmer

Expect wonky glamour, Instagrammable pain and underground gambling in Abi Palmer’s ‘Crip Casino’. Jump straight into the action with absurdist roulette, play against bizarre hacked fruit machines offering increasingly strange instructions, or simply wind down and watch the high rollers play...

Crip Casino explores the overlap between chance, ritual, winning and losing, and invites participants of all ages to reconsider their position in life.

Come and play with us throughout the week, or visit on Saturday 23 March when artists Abi Palmer and Jackie Hagan will be in person, performing 'The Assessment'.

There will also be a relaxed performance of 'The Assessment' on Friday 22 March with the artists, from 3-5pm.

The Assessment is a Kafkaesque sequence of 1 to 1 interactive games and installation, designed to explore the narrative of how disabled bodies are depicted as a drain on society’s resources. As the game takes you through the barriers that disabled people face you may win, be interrogated, encouraged to commit fraud, or be taxed unfairly.

The game culminates in an income assessment, where you may be asked to sacrifice your prize to the “National Health Shrine” ‘for the good of everyone’, or find yourself among the highest echelons of society, taking the best objects from the shrine (and leaving it a little bit worse for everyone else). Click here for Abi's artist profile.

Many Shapes of Volumes

Seohye Lee

Drawing on artist Seohye’s experience with hearing loss and her interest in exploring ownership of sound, this interactive sound installation invites you to experience sound in a new way.

The installation features handcrafted vases of varying shapes and sizes, each unexpectedly playing their own unique soundscape. The simplicity of the vases playfully interacts with colourful abstract drawings displayed on the wall. These drawings depict visual interpretations the artist has made of the sounds heard through her cochlear implant.

The audience will be invited to listen and feel these unique soundscapes, and question their own experiences of sound.

Can you draw what you hear, or feel? Click here for Seohye's artist profile.

My Body Is The House That I Live In

Romily Alice Walden

Reflect on ‘wellness’ with an interactive neon installation, developed from artist Romily Alice Walden’s experience of living with a chronic illness and disability.

The installation consists of 7 white neon tubes, each corresponding to a different facet of wellness. Every hour, the artist will assign each wellness category a number which will determine each tube’s brightness, using C++ coding to adjust the light output of the neon tubes.

This installation moves illness out of isolation and into the public realm, creating an ever-evolving portrait of living with sickness, one that views gendered disability as a political issue. The Tate Exchange space will be transformed, bringing chronic illness/disability out of private bedrooms and sick beds, and into the public space.

With this interactive piece, the artist is inviting the audience to confront the monotonous reality of living with a chronic health condition, and to challenge their own internalised notions of wellness/sickness, disabled/able-bodied binaries.   

Visitors will be asked to reflect on their own levels of wellness. What does wellness look like? How does is fluctuate? What will our collective wellness look like at the end of the week? Click here for Romily's artist profile.

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Shape Arts Zine Library

Pore over our library of zines by disabled artists and learn about this thriving culture creating accessible print for anyone and everyone. Make your own lo-fi creation alongside our artists and take home your own work of art.

A 'zine' is short for 'fanzine' and by definition is a non-commercial often home-made (DIY) publication which is usually devoted to specialized and often unconventional subject matter. Zines have been a way for women, queers, POC, trans, genderqueer, non-binary, intersex, disabled, working class and otherwise marginalised people to exercise their voices.

Drop in and make a zine with artist Mia Maxwell and take home your own work of art. Saturday 23 March 12pm - 6pm

Drop in and make a zine with artist and activist Hamja Ahsan and take home your own work of art. Sunday 24 March 12pm - 6pm

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Getting There:

By tube:

PLEASE NOTE: TFL have advised that from Wednesday 20 March until early April, there will be no step-free access to the Jubilee line at Southwark station, due to planned works. For step-free access to the Jubilee line, please go to Waterloo station. Alternatively, take bus routes 45, 63 or 388 from stop SA to Blackfriars station for the Circle and District line.

Southwark (Jubilee Line, 600 metres approx)

Blackfriars underground: District and Circle Line, 800 metres approx (note there is also Blackfriars train station – 500m separate)

St Paul’s: Central Line, 1,100 metres approx.

By bus:

Routes 45, 63 and 100 stop on Blackfriars Bridge Road

Routes RV1 and 381 stop on Southwark Street

Route 344 stops on Southwark Bridge Road

By Train:

Blackfriars train station, South Exit, is 300 metres approx. (note that there is also Blackfriars underground station – 500m separate)

London Bridge 1,100 metres approx.

You can download a Microsoft Doc photo journey from Blackfriars station to Tate Modern here.

By Taxi:

Ask for the Tate Modern (SE1 9TG).  The driver probably wouldn’t know where the Tate Exchange is!

By Car:

There are twelve parking spaces for disabled visitors to Tate Modern, accessed via Park Street. Please book these spaces in advance, through the Tate website, giving at least 24 hours’ notice.

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Banner Image: Shape Arts at Tate Exchange 2018, photographed by Rachel Cherry

Body Image: Zine Library at Shape Open 2018, photographed by Rachel Cherry

With thanks to Cass Art who provide artist materials for these workshops.