All Hands on Deck At The Blackwood Gallery
UTM’s art gallery has a wealth of art and knowledge through a publication that showcases how senses besides sight and hearing can be utilized to experience the artistic process
UTM’s Blackwood Gallery continues to serve the community through its engagement with the arts. It now has a new publication out for release within a publication series titled Working With Concepts. The new publication is titled All Hands On Deck! Reshaping Access Using Our Senses and it originated from the material presented at the gallery’s The Whole World in Our Hands forum that took place on November 13, 2024 and was curated by Jacqui Usiskin. Its contributors include Seika Boye, Eliza Chandler, Shay Erlich, Maryam Hafizirad, Devon Healey, SF Ho, Nina Leo, Ely Lyonblum, iele paloumpis, Cleopatra Peterson, Moez Surani, moira williams and Jacqui Usiskin who was also the editor.
The piece invites contributors to revisit, reflect on and expand on their work through new exchanges with both artists and researchers working in convergent areas of inquiry and practice. It also provides insight on artistic frameworks for access-creation tools and methodologies in the arts through multisensory engagement to show that accessibility in the arts is based on collective and sustained collaboration with others. This commitment to showcasing the multisensory nature of art extends well into the publication itself which provides several intersensory formats for viewers to engage with the work using. These include ASL [American Sign Language] interpretation, audio readings and image descriptions integrated in the online version of the publication. ASL interpretations have become a common way of helping viewers’ ability to engage with the artistic process as The Whole World in Our Hands forum also provided this with interpreters Gloria Brifoglio and Peggy Zehr.
All Hands on Deck! Reshaping Access Using Our Senses is part of the publication series titled Working with Concepts. This is a publication series devoted to advocacy, dialogue and resource sharing as well as reports on the workshops and events organized by the Blackwood Gallery. These programs identify as useful tools for aiding resource sharing across disciplines and sectors. All Hands on Deck extends the methods, observations and orientations that were presented at the previous The Whole World in Our Hands Forum into publication form. This publication is currently available to be read online on the Blackwood gallery website.
Some examples of how the art can be experienced using other senses the gallery utilized descriptions and ASL. As an example of the former the description starts off by reading “GIF in the order of appearance”. Followed by explaining each image, the composition, the shades of colour such as lavender, and the objects/ people that can be seen in the artwork. As an example of the former the ASL interpreter is seen against a lavender background and a large play symbol for a still image to convey the artwork titled Phoenix The Fire.
As a preview of what the Blackwood Gallery currently has in store for the UTM community, the exhibit Stim Cinema is currently playing. Curated by Christine Shaw this exhibition features work by The Neurocultures Collective consisting of neurodivergent artists Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Sam Chown Ahern, Robin Elliot-Knowles, and Lucy Walker. They have collaborated with artist-filmmaker Steven Eastwood. This exhibit will be available to attend until February 28, 2026 and a Contemporary Art Bus Tour will be available to attend via registration on the final day of the exhibition.
