The exhibition centers on illness as an ongoing ebb and flow rather than a fixed state. A “flare” is framed as bringing light to what is usually kept hidden, ignored, or made invisible. Artworks include pastel bunting made from hospital sheets, transforming bedbound, infantilized experiences into celebratory, embodied presence. The show includes themes such as near-death experiences, religion’s focus on purity, crip memes, and the burdens of government paperwork for people unable to work. Water appears repeatedly through healing baths, marine ecology, and pollution, including a work using water gathered from dehumidifiers in damp, mold-blighted homes. The overall aim is to challenge assumptions that disabled communities lack productivity or social value.
"“I’m having a flare-up”, is a really common phrase that you hear in the crip’ community… The show includes artists who do and don’t identify as crip’ (a defiant reclaiming of derogatory slang) and underlines the ebb and flow of symptoms to explore illness as anything but static.”"
"“A flare, adds Lemos’s collaborator Natasha Hoare, brings light to things that have been kept in the dark, ignored or invisible-ised. There’s a sense of celebration to it, perhaps.”"
"“In Flare Up, his pastel bunting crisscrosses a ceiling, before pooling on the floor in a heap, its energy apparently drained. Cut from hospital sheets, the party flags defy the infantilised days of the bedbound. The fabric, in its typically soothing nursery colours, has also soaked up the seeping life of the bodies it hides: be that fever sweats or sex.”"
"“We need to challenge the fallacy of disabled communities not being productive or having no value socially. The subject matter includes near-death experiences, religion’s obsession with purity, crip memes and the tyranny of government paperwork that those unable to work must navigate.”"
Read at www.theguardian.com
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