Disability in the frame

Hello everyone and welcome to today's special virtual highlights tour today here at the National Portrait Gallery to mark International Day of People with Disability. It's held every year on the 3rd of December and it's really to increase public awareness and understanding and acceptance of people with disability and full disclosure that I have a have a vested interest in this day. I have an autoimmune disease and I'm a permanent wheelchair user so I really understand the importance of being seen for who I am and you know for having purpose. My name is Kate some of you will have seen me here before I'm in the education team taking today's tour. We also have wonderful Therese who is our Auslan interpreter and is going to sign for us today as well so I'm going to try and be much better with my delivery today and really slow it down so that everyone can enjoy today's presentation.

I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land here in Canberra that the National Portrait Gallery is on and that's the Nunawul and Nambri peoples and I pay my respects to their elders past and emerging.

So let me tell you about today's virtual highlights tour. We're going to be celebrating sitters and artists that we have in the collection who have a disability and we're going to be I've chosen five portraits and we're going to be looking at how representation has changed over time. As usual please everyone get busy in the chat you know I love these sessions to be interactive that's when they're really fun for all of us so any observations or questions you have please pop it in the chat and with that let's get started and go to our first portrait everyone. This is called Chang the Chinese Giant and Party and first up I want to give you a minute to have to have a look at this. Pop your observations into the chat for me what can you see?

Thanks everyone that's right this is a guy called Chang Wu Gao and known as Chang the Chinese Giant made first sort of public appearance in London in the mid 1860s when thousands of people lined lined the streets to see his his eight foot tall frame and also witnessed his displays of linguistics because apparently he spoke 10 languages so an incredibly cultured man and he first he appeared at a place called the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly in London and it was part of this kind of Victorian taste for you know sort of a freak show all sorts of different people were kind of exhibiting themselves I guess but very much of that era so in the 21st century it certainly doesn't sit well with us but this was in in 1865 he first was exhibiting himself and he after Piccadilly he really he spent his life exhibiting and he went to with Europe America he ended up in Australia in about 1870 and if we could just go back to the image thanks and that's where we have about five of these carte de visite photographs from this period and I like that in the chat there is something nearly majestic from this yes yeah he does look majestic and I think this is really deliberate isn't it that even though he is seated you can see he's just so much taller than his manager who is standing there and his wife Kin Fu who is kind of very neatly tucked in underneath his elbow so he is majestic and yeah noticing that he's got this long pigtail a very traditional hairdo kind of that shaved top of his head and then this long pigtail plait down behind this long braid and he's also costumed in this heavily embroidered robes so and he's got this delicate fan in front of him so does Kin Fu so we're really getting this he's got this unique combination I guess of this asiatic otherness and these gigantic proportions and that's really you know what he became known for and it's such I have such a push-pull with this image I'm really curious to know how you feel about looking at it because I'm kind of really drawn to it and I'm really curious and in the 21st century is is is that okay am I any better than the kind of Victorian audiences but in the same token Chang also he this is how he did back then this is how he he made his living and these carte de visite they were they came into Australia about 1859 and people like Chang used them kind of to as a quirky souvenir of being in his celestial presence apparently and so they were a memento and they were ideal as this kind of distribution to the masses to kind of promote his his viewings and a couple of things that I found really kind of disturbing about a couple of anecdotes I came across is one that his manager who stand in there actually forbade stopped Chang were walking in public because thought that that might kind of you know ruin his public appeal I guess people wouldn't be turning up for the performances which is an incredibly distressing thing isn't it to think that this man's life he was all going to be about viewing and making money from just being this exceptionally tall man and he also travelled apparently with a tailor-made coffin which really reminds us you know case disaster struck this kind of morbid reminder of this giant sir common humanity I also when I was looking into Chang I came across some information on our website and saying that you know like I said there's this Victorian taste for these kind of freak shows but there were also at this time this period of these grand international exhibitions you know wonders of the industrial age and so there were all these trade exhibits but there were also these semi anthropological displays popular feeding into this kind of fascination of the fantastic exotica I guess which had long sort of been part of this Orientalism and what I found was that when those formal exhibition halls closed the surrounding gardens were used as this kind of fashionable venue for entertainment until around 11 each evening and there was food and drink people wandering around pavilions and stages and so they're marveling at all these sort of different performances from you know there's tightrope walkers there's jugglers people from all around the world who were wearing their kind of national costume and the Chinese pavilion was one such venue and people could come this is where they would encounter Chang sitting upon his throne or mingling with visitors to the pavilion and apparently one of his performances might have gone like this this is what I picked up that tickets to one of his levees might cost up to three shillings and this levee is a public court assembly where people would attend someone of great rank and a Mr. Hushed auditorium there would be a tinkle of bells that would go to a rising crescendo as a musician took to the largest brass bells with a mallet Chang would slowly rise from his throne like chair on stage to the rousing accompaniment of the great Chang hulker on the piano which was supposedly written for him and his appearances at the Egyptian hall and he'd slowly descend to greet his audience in a ceremony referred to as a chin chin making like conversation exchanging polite greetings with patrons who gasped in awe at his at his magnificently costumed person his great hands would gently clasp select hands in the audience in greeting and that he were he apparently appeared mild and gentle very courteous and engaging as he walked from one spectator to another shaking hands with all who wanted to so this is his story and the start of our look at disability.

I want to take you to a reinterpretation of Chang with our next slide which is you may have seen there's a series of 16 portraits done by Chinese Australian woman called Pamela See and here she's got Chang in profile and with his wife Kin Fu again who's seated but she's reimagining you know the this Chinese man in Australia and she uses two different kind of paper cutting techniques she's got that European style paper cutting with the with the black in profile that's from a German artist in the 1700s and then she's got up in the white is a peony this is this really ancient Chinese paper cutting technique and she she uses that to show perhaps where Chang was from in China so she's combining these two different techniques and and it's a kind of going back and reimagining the impact and the and the life of these Chinese people in Australia when they were here going to take you to something totally different.

Now and our next slide is of an artist called Theresa Burns again I'm going to just give you a minute to take a look tell me what you see so that's right this is Theresa Burns and she moved to New York quite early on in her art practice and yeah that's right I can see in the chat yeah abstract expressionism and mark making painting that's that's spot on she's really her obsession as she calls it exactly is with abstraction and I can see here at first I thought she was outside near a bamboo forest yeah but then realized she's indoors that's right I think she's in her studio and beautifully captures her creativity doesn't it exactly and yeah she's very much as you're as you're picking up on this kind of Jackson Pollock approach to physical expressionism with the with the paint this really energised relationship with paint and you can see that both in terms of she does it I think on you know she's got that large surface behind her that that canvas but she'll also use the floor and she'll kind of use her own her own body as as the brush paint you know painting her body and rolling and creating line and shape with her body so despite the fact she's in a wheelchair I think when she was 17 she was diagnosed with a very rare degenerative degenerative disease called Friedrich's ataxia but she talks about there being no obstacles for her and she says not men not money not just not disability nothing will stop me I'm getting to the fricking studio and I'm making that painting so you can see these in this beautiful black and white photograph you know she's just staring out so confidently at us everything in that space you know including her arms clothes the wheelchair the floor everything is splattered with paint that wall extends across the entire space behind her you know just coated with layers of paints applied with a huge brush strokes but also dips and sprays drips and sprays there's if yeah if we can just go to the full image again because I just want to say there's kind of this white street that runs down that full length at the center of the wall kind of quietly dividing that space and in that lower foreground she's she's in her wheelchair there but she she just to me she looks so strong and so fierce with her gaze coming back out at her these beautiful sort of high cheekbones unsmiling kind of got a slender torso it looks to me she's kind of twisting a little bit to us she's got all this heavily you know painted like paint splattered jeans heavy-duty laced laced up workbook work boots and down by the floor behind her she's got these these big kind of paint brushes lying down there so letting us know clearly everything in this painting is just telling us how how about her profession as a painter and about how she must use her body so totally and with throwing everything into it to create these works and you really get a sense of that energy with which she must work you know she she never backs away from what are her limitations maybe increasing limitations with her body she uses it to you know fullest extent in this in this passionate kind of connection conversation she has with her art practice so that's Teresa Burns and yeah I love your comments just saying that it beautifully captures her creativity.

We're going to go now to look at something completely different from that kind of wild paint splattered expressiveness of of Teresa Burns studio we're going to this beautiful portrait of Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu you know who used that angelic voice of his to you know tell traditional stories of of his people and his culture you may have seen this portrait before but just tell me what are your first impressions of of Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu's portrait yeah there's this comment here about deep sunken eyes absolutely his eyes they're kind of veiled in in shadow they're really dark aren't they and that shadow really sort of acts as a focal point really you know and it's offering us up that sort of powerful reference I guess to to his blindness and and also his intense shyness I think and one of the comments this is one of the portraits I have actually seen for real when I was in Australia in 2019 yeah I love these words it's a strong and impressive artwork isn't it it's I think that beautifully sums up this kind of evocation of what Guido Maestri is doing here you know we have this beautiful face it's you know it's just the huge scale of this and looking at us you know front on facing us front on and that tip of their head to kind of got that white highlight and that's tip of his head is really cropped off you know his head is just short and dark around the tops there got a fine line of sideburn down past that ear these amazing eyes that we've spoken about and there was really an active trust here between the artist and Gurrumul you know who as you will know was blind from very I think very early on in his life perhaps from birth and he had to trust the artist in the way that he would be depicted and it's important to say that Guy Maestri shared this image and he described it to Gurrumul and and sort kind of affirmation from Gurrumul and his family that it was that it was okay to to use so it's really creating and sharing Gurrumul and depicting him through someone else's eyes so strongly strongly evocative evocative of that of that life and and his voice and I wanted to share with you some background story I'm not sure if you know this about this portrait but Guido Maestri heard Gurrumul sing at a New Year's Eve concert in 2008 in Sydney I think and he found the concert so unforgettable that he had to track down Gurrumul and you know create this portrait of him he knew he'd be an incredible subject and so he got in touch with a friend in the music industry helped him track down Yuna Pingu who was in Darwin but he was about to fly out to the States I think for a music tour in the end Guy Maestri got sort of a 40 minute window of opportunity with Guramul at the airport took some sketches and some photographs and apparently he said of the meeting that I got a sense of his presence and this determined the nature of the portrait quiet and strong which is exactly what you're picking up on here comment that focused inwardly yeah yeah he's in his he's in his mind and there is something daunting about the feeling portrayed something daunting I love that and his voice is so emotional I love him I know do you I get the sense you know that there's this quiet hum with this portrait and you just get his voice kind of floating back to me and I'm wondering if that is what you're picking up on as well emotional strong and impressive work and I think that Guy Maestri he ended up just going back and working in his studio I think he worked for a month long he was just listening to Gurrumul's music totally in that moment and trying to really just connect with the songs and the story and he won I think he won the archival prize in 2009 with this portrait and of course Gurrumul Yunupingu I just love this that he was just so talented he could play when he was quite young he learned to play guitar keyboard drums did you do as a child he was blind from birth and he famously was left handed but he learned to play a right-handed guitar upside down so just you know a powerful portrait you know strongly evocative of this life lost but you know it's just resounding I think with this beautiful resonant voice that he had.

I'm now going to take you to our final portrait in this tour looking at now a sitter with disability and I'm going to take you to this wonderful contemporary photograph of Ellie Cole and Ellie Cole is the most famous female Paralympian and she's sitting here this was a photograph taken in 2016 it's at Wiley Baths in Kujie and she was photographed for an article about Australian women competing in the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio and it appeared in also in 2020 in a Netflix series I think that was looking at six athletes who competed in these Paralympics and she was I think she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in her right leg when she was a child and I think she was on E3 when she had surgery to amputate that limb just above her knee but her parents as part of her rehabilitation they enrolled her in swimming classes and she was 15 when she competed in the world championships for the first time you know winning a silver medal and she went on to I think at the end of her career she had won 17 medals so you know this phenomenal swimmer Paralympian champion and here this is just such a beautiful photo quite it's quite she's you know beside the ocean she's sitting on these big boulders and also you can see there atop the Australian flag and these big kind of rocks it's taken at dusk so we kind of get these wispy clouds you know low on the sky behind her she's kind of got that left leg tucked up knee near her shoulder we get this carbon fibre prosthetic leg that she has on there's you know a bit of scuffing around the toes she's but she's looking out at us she just looks so fit and healthy and strong fairly neutral expression I think you know that wet hair like she may well have just been swimming just you know beautiful beautiful photo in her speedo swimsuit we're being told very clearly of her of her profession and of her success and you know highlighting her muscular muscular build there and just behind her is this ocean and I love that here we've gone kind of from at the start we have Chang the Chinese giant where we're really emphasizing his difference everything you know him exhibiting himself you know he ended up in PT Barnum's you know extravaganza show of you know all sorts of different people these freak shows emphasising difference to here I feel with Ellie Cole we've gone to embracing the difference and seeing it as a power I'm going to end with a video that is giving really the last word to Ellie Cole because it's such a beautiful story and I think you know we've gone that from that early photo of Chang to this lovely photo of Ellie Cole at the end such a difference and hopefully to you know embracing this theme of understanding and accepting disability that it's it can actually be a power and someone's strength so I hope you've enjoyed today's tour and as I say I'm going to give the last word to Ellie Cole.

Swimming's one of those sports where you have your face in the water you have no idea what's going on in the outside world and so you spend a lot of time with your minds when times are really hard you just jump into the pool and you think things over you've got a biology exam coming up you jump in the pool and you think things over you've had a fight with your partner you jump in the pool and you think things over so it's a really great pull a pull of reflection I guess you could say I think that when you're young you just want to be accepted by all of your friends and away from me to do that was swimming for me swimming was particularly special because it was the only sport that I could participate in as a kid where I could take my prosthetic leg off jump in the water and I could be the same as all the other kids and then I found after a while that I could actually be better than raise to my friends at that sport and it gave me a really great platform to show all of my friends at school that I could still achieve things in a physical sense because I definitely wasn't running up and down beside them in the playground but get me into a pool and I'll beat you that was always kind of the mentality that I had when I was younger and so for me like the pool was definitely a great place of freedom but it was where I learned how to back myself how to be resilient how to show the world what I could do and then I found my way onto the Paralympic team with that exact same attitude and have since seen how the Paralympics can show the world what their athletes can do. The great thing about Paralympic swimming for me is that I see people who have no arms and no legs that are still swimming and so for me to break a here for to break a foot wasn't really a good enough excuse for me to stop swimming I just had to find it to provide to do things and be really creative and that's one of the things that I love about Parasport. Being a Paralympian is the best job in the world so I get to wake up in the morning nice and early and have about 20 minutes myself before I go to the pool and then I usually jump in the pool right behind me here and swim for about two hours and then jump out of the pool and get about an hour of physiotherapy exercises done and then if time permits I go home have a nap but usually I have other commitments and then I'm back in the afternoon from it for another two hour session I guess you have to love the sports to swim four hours a day. The most proud that I've ever been is when I won my gold medal in the 100 meter backstroke at Rio because I had been racing for nine days and I've been chasing gold medals but I'd always be getting touched out and getting silver which is still great but I've got to day nine and I had one last chance to win a gold medal and I was so stressed out before the event that I locked myself in a toilet cubicle it had a mild panic attack and didn't think that I could go out there and race and I got myself out of the toilet cubicle and I walked onto the pool deck and I jumped in and I won the race. It was the greatest moment ever. So I did that photo shoot with Peter right before the Rio Paralympic Games and it was a moment where we really wanted to showcase the athletes of Australia that were going to the Olympics and the Paralympics and so I was asked to do a photo shoot outside which was really exciting to me to begin with and then Peter put me on some really beautiful rocks with the Australian flag and obviously I'm very proud to be an Australian Paralympian so to have the flag in that photo was really important to me. I guess he kind of wanted to show what I wanted to be when I was younger which was a mermaid like I always dreamed of being a mermaid when I was younger and so to be able to capture that in a portrait as well as you know the strength and you know showcasing my disability as well and combining that into like my childhood dream with the inclusion of being strong and powerful was a really great photo for me and you know it's something that I've always looked back on and been really proud to have been involved in such a creation but I always look at it and think that's not me but it is it's just beautiful. To be able to just showcase my disability is something that I can't really put into words you know when I was younger I never saw people or role models that had a disability. It's really a dream come true just to be able to show the world that you can still be a mermaid, you can still have a disability, you can still be a Paralympian, you can do whatever you like. Yeah it's cool. I don't know how land people do exercises. Exercises on land when it comes with gravity and changes in blood pressure is really difficult. I really take my hat off these land people.