Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Teesside University
Motion Disabled: Unlimited
'Motion Disabled: Unlimited' arose from the legacy of the award winning exhibition and installation 'Motion Disabled'. 'Motion Disabled: Unlimited', an Arts Council of England ‘Unlimited’ commission (£60,000) for the London 2012 Festival and Cultural Olympiad studies the body and movement of some of the UK’s most famous Paralympians including Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson and London 2012 contenders, taking McKeown’s work in new directions. A major element of the work is the largest inflatable sculpture in the UK, entitled ‘The Last Thalidomide’ that McKeown designed and which forms the centrepiece of a series of multiplatform interventionist participatory works. This is the largest bipedal inflatable structure made in the UK.
The work was premiered at the launch event on July 9th 2012 for Oxford's Olympic Torch Relay celebration at South Park, in front of the event’s 20,000 sell out audience. Since then the installation has been exhibited at ten other leading venues in the UK including at Jubilee Gardens on the South Bank and at the South Bank Centre as part of their ‘Unlimited Presents’ Festival, itself part of the London 2012 celebrations.
The full work integrates the digital and the actual with the concept of using integrated platform technologies to access the work. Motion capture animation is linked to the inflatable via a smartphone application that introduces viewers to the exhibition using QR codes and augmented reality; transmedia technologies. In our postmodern setting McKeown is using his skills to provide asynchronous access to his work.
Working with partners, DOX, the Czech Republic’s main contemporary art centre situated in Prague, this work was included in an exhibition entitled Disabled by Normality - 2013, forming one of the first large scale mainstream explorations of disability. McKeown’s work is further included in an exhibition at the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum in Dresden for 9 months from October 2013.
