‘Feel that swishiness’: An art exhibition that wants you to touch the work
Audiences are encouraged to explore works through their hands and bodies in a ‘touch-first’ exhibition at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental visitors that centres blind and visually impaired art lovers.
Can Touch This subverts not only the lyrics of rapper MC Hammer’s 1990 dance hit, but also the rule at most museums and galleries. Artworks, we learn from an early age, are for looking at – not touching.
Gallery experiences are occasionally adapted to make them more accessible for people who are blind or have low vision, but when textile artist Shan Michaels and the team at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental embarked on Can Touch This, they centred blind gallery-goers from the outset.
The resulting immersive exhibition includes soft sculptures, costumes and other tactile elements, accompanied by a sensory soundtrack by South Australian blind composer Antony Abbracciavento.
“Hopefully, the combination of costumes and fun textures and Antony’s music will inspire a lot of joy and playfulness,” Michaels says of the work, which is presented as part of Push / Pull, a series of major projects at ACE exploring tension in different forms.
While the Queensland-based artist made most of the pieces in Can Touch This herself, she collaborated closely with members of South Australia’s blind and visually impaired (BVI) community.
Shan Michaels at work in the studio. Photo: Lana Adams / Supplied.
Students from South Australian School and Services for the Visually Impaired (SASSVI) created wayfinding to help visitors navigate the exhibition, and took part in sewing workshops where they made what Michaels describes as “long threads” – 3-metre-long tubes of fabric with stuffing inside that hang from the gallery ceiling.
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“A lot of the students don’t attend galleries… their experience, if they have attended a gallery, is that it’s just very boring: ‘I can’t touch anything, so why would I go there?’,” she says.
“So for them to be welcomed into ACE and to be a part of the exhibition in this way, it’s incredibly meaningful.”
The students’ “long threads” hang alongside those made by Michaels, who says there are around 50 in total: “We welcome everybody to interact with them. You can walk through them, you can hug them, you can do whatever you like.”
This is the overriding ethos of Can Touch This, which also includes cloaks or tunics in various fabrics that gallery visitors can try on, an installation Michaels describes as a curtain of builders’ twine, and soft sculptures made from plush cat caves that can be worn on the head like a helmet.
“One has tassels on the bottom… if you jump around with it or spin around with it, you can feel that swishiness of the tassels,” she says of the embellished cat caves. “Another one has feathers and fabric with little bumps on it, so there’s lots of different tactile elements.”
While there is a predominance of soft fabrics in Can Touch This, it also features other materials such as sequins and corduroy. Michaels acknowledges that, like taste, tactility is subjective.
“Some of the kids at the school actually didn’t like the felt that I’d chosen because it has a wool blend – they found it scratchy. But that’s part of the experience… there are a variety [of fabrics] that you might like or you might not like, just to provide some sensory challenge or some sensory love.”
Abbracciavento, who last year composed a piece performed by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, has created a 14-minute soundtrack that will play on a loop in Can Touch This. Michaels says his brief was “strings, tubes and playful”.
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Michaels (left) leads a sewing workshop at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental. Photo: Lana Adams / Supplied
“So the first movement has a lot of string sounds, the second movement has a lot of tube sounds, and the third movement, which is my favourite, is very playful – it makes you want to move.”
Visitors with sight will have the option of wearing a mindfold (light-blocking mask) to encourage them to focus on the tactile aspect of Can Touch This. Michaels explains that the works are all in various shades of pink – a deliberate move that makes it difficult to pick out detail by relying solely on vision.
“So you can use mindfolds if you’d like, or you can just close your eyes, or you don’t have to [do either of those things]. You’re welcome to experience it however you like.”
A series of special events and activations is being presented alongside Can Touch This, including a blind community day, a “braille bombing” session where playful braille labels will be posted on buildings adjacent to ACE, and an afternoon of talks featuring Michaels, Abbracciavento and ACE artistic director Danni Zuvela, who will discuss the history of “devisualising” the gallery experience.
Zuvela, who co-curated Push / Pull with Henry Wolff, first approached Michaels after seeing her community-based textile work Threads of Connection, presented in Queensland’s Moreton Bay.
Michaels says her broader practice includes works related to queer history and women’s history, with a focus on exploring identity, inclusion, accessibility and sustainability. The eldest of her two daughters has low vision, and it was through this connection to the BVI community that her interest in tactile experiences evolved.
“The kids are very familiar with going to galleries. Often, they can’t touch anything, so then the gallery staff will give them a little game to play which is some sort of visual finding game. That’s annoying to my oldest daughter… she doesn’t feel included.”
Photo: Lana Adams / Supplied
Even when Michaels has had her own work on show, she says art spaces haven’t acceded to her request to allow people to touch it, or to have it accompanied by a didactic in braille or large print.
By putting BVI gallery-goers first, rather than addressing their needs in a “tokenistic access conversation at the end”, she hopes Can Touch This will encourage other galleries and curators to consider how they might incorporate similar elements.
“We would love that to happen – not in a confrontational way, but just opening up the conversation,” she says. “I would just love if we could create some awareness.”
Can Touch This runs at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental from May 3 until June 28 as part of Push / Pull, curated by Danni Zuvela and Henry Wolff.
Push / Pull also includes the performance and live art projects She Also Performs and Deeply Hanging Out. Details of associated special events, including the blind community day on May 8, can be found here.