Creative Team
Aliey Ball, Curator & Artistic Director
Jeremy Hawkes, Artist
Pezaloom, Artist
Go to Artists for more information about the creative team
Substantia Nigra
'Substantia Nigra' is a medical term that refers to a part
of the brain that controls the manufacture of dopamine, and in particular when
this fails to occur which results in the neurological condition known as
Parkinson's Disease (PD). It translates, literally, as 'black substance,' as
the part of the brain affected darkens in pigment as the disease progresses. The exhibition will explore the symptoms
of PD as tools of artistic expression by two contemporary artists living with
the disease.
'Substantia Nigra' is a collaborative project between three
artists; two of whom will act as visual artists / performers and a third as
curator and artistic director. The two artists both live and experience a
degenerative neurological condition commonly known as Parkinson's Disease.
There are many misconceptions and myths surrounding this disease, namely that
it effects the elderly and is incapacitating. Both the artists and the curator
wish to challenge this view of dis-ease, and instead see it as a point of
difference, of departure from questions of identity within a larger societal
context, and more specifically, within a contemporary art field. As a point of
difference 'Substantia Nigra” challenges ideas of the body in art, cognitive
functionality, ideas of the erotic and ultimately of systems of control, both
intrinsic and extrinsic.
As a further point of difference, by collaborating with a
curator whose function it is to artistically direct the project, we transgress
traditional ideas of collaboration. The curatorial role is not a static one; it
informs and brings about a cohesion of aesthetic experience quite different to
a more conventionally curated exhibition. The curator as film director, as
opposed to the curator as museum overseer. This creates a vibrancy of dynamics,
and the potential for the documentation of the cultural product to inform and
feedback into the project itself. These relationships have the possibility to
disengage with a normative cultural experience in that we do not envisage an
end to the project – rather a series of continuous beginnings.
