Conversing Building X AccessArt Exhibition: Face to Face

AccessArt Turning Point Scotland has been part of the creative community of Dumfries and Galloway for over 20 years, facilitating creative opportunities for individuals and communities who have experienced barriers to inclusion.

Our commitment to this continues through our program of sessions & workshops we deliver out of the Gracefield Arts Centre in Dumfries. We offer a wide variety of creative opportunities to individuals with learning disabilities and/or autism.

This year, the theme for Learning Disabilities Week is Digital Inclusion, as part of this week of awareness, our participants have produced a collective artwork to exhibit at the Stove Cafe, from the 6th to the 18th of May.

Technology is shaping our daily lives more than ever and the question of digital inclusion has become increasingly vital.

This was most apparent during the lockdowns when video conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Teams replaced face-to-face social interaction with digital connection. ‘Face to Face’ explores the quality of the connections we make online It investigates the notions of “poor connection” and “good connection”. Just as a digital connection can vary in quality, so can social ones; our artwork attempts to visualise this idea.

The exhibition takes the form of a series of three-dimensional heads varying in size and levels of complexity. Each head is wrapped in a hand-drawn map that has been semi-abstracted through a process of drawing, collaging and re-drawing.

Face to Face is on display from Monday the 6th of May till Saturday the 18th of May in the Stove Cafe (closed on Sundays).