Welcome to the Disability Arts Online Magazine. Your weekly dose of disability arts and culture. This time, Shape Open 2025, Rights Cuts Action.
Shape Open 2025, Rights Cuts Action: the creativity of disabled resistance
Content note: this article contains references to death and themes that may cause distress.
This year's Shape Open exhibition takes up the expansive space of High Wycombe's Brunel Engine Shed featuring work by 12 disabled artists alongside archival protest photography from Keith Armstrong. The works respond to the political backdrop continuous cuts to disability benefits and the ongoing fight for disabled people's rights in the face of oppression. Review by Sonia Boué.
Content note: this article contains references to death and themes that may cause distress.
There could only be one theme for the Shape Open 2025, and Rights Cuts Action nails it. The Brunel Engine Shed in High Wycombe is a venue that could overshadow a show – a gorgeous, vast, and lofty, retrofitted building, originally designed Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It is Grade II listed and open-plan, featuring original brickwork and ceiling-to-floor windows. It’s also more cafe than gallery, all of which could make for a tricky hang; sometimes, curtains stand in for walls.
No matter, think protest demo, and you’re there. Gaffer tape and extension cables are on view, as if to make a point. Disability can be messy, and it can happen to you. So, why are we not all screaming about benefit cuts: an existential threat made for creative resistance? Cycles of disability justice and protest history run through the exhibits with a heart-sinking sense of déjà vu. Who is watching, I wonder?
The show’s anchor is an archival display of legendary disability rights campaigner Keith Armstrong’s iconic Protest Photographs (1980s and 90s). Viewing them as scaled-up prints in the gallery brings a new dimension. There’s a fine line between documentation and art; these prints could also serve as placards, in my view. They say it all and are still needed; a digitised archive will be published online in 2026. Enduring acts of witness, they are the touchstone for this year’s selections.
Vince Laws has to take breaks when making their extraordinary 'DWP Death Makes Me Sick' shrouds (2018 ongoing). They’re painful, but Laws wants them to be seen. Job done, they’re unmissable; hung throughout the gallery like giant textile tombstones. Each brooding spectral cloth commemorates the life of a victim of the Department of Work and Pensions’ ‘hostile environment’ with a silent yet somehow screaming biography.
Anna Berry’s 'The Political is Personal' (2015) also memorialises named individuals who died due to the bedroom tax or as a result of having benefits cut. Three wreaths, constructed using party political flyers, seem light and airy from a distance. A closer look reveals a poignant act of mourning.
Ivan Riches’ Disable the Disabled, a poem set to music and film, picks up the protest baton. Acoustics in this spacious environment prove tricky. My hearing aids wrestle with the soundtrack even though I toggle to full volume. No bother, the work is transfixing; a collage of monochrome contemporary protest footage overlaid with cutouts of the artist’s unblinking eyes. I notice I’m cold. My circulatory condition (Raynaud’s) starts to kick in. There’s coffee, and the giant entrance door is kindly closed on request. The Brunel Engine Shed is so vast that I have to don my woolly hat and scarf, but I’m feeling a different kind of chill.
I need a switch of tempo, and Guy Morris's sculptures draw me in with vintage charisma and the promise of amusement. They are both playful and thought-provoking. 'You Still Make Me Crawl' (2025) is floor-based, and a crank handle is set awkwardly low. Will I have to crawl to use it? I don’t know, but I enjoy the joke, if there is one; the piece is about the relentless struggle faced by disabled people. As I stoop to turn the handle and watch a rubber band go around, I’m sold on Morris’s satirical humour. 'Sorry, Come Again' (2025) is a gloriously dysfunctional foot-operated stamping device, ridiculing the benefits system. I stamp before reading the instructions, and think I’ve broken it! I haven’t, but I find out that there’s a wooden pole if needed. 'Are We There Yet?' (2025) makes me reflect on the visual gag in contemporary art. David Shrigley comes to mind, but Morris has heft.
Samples of Emma Bentley Fox’s powerful and empowering 'Taking the PIP' (2025) portraits can be viewed online and are wonderful. In the gallery, a total of 25 portraits are projected with an old-school slide carousel; two armchairs are set at either side. Are we in the present or somewhere back in time? Overhead gallery lighting serves to wash out portraits and placards; the dynamics of erasure surface. Erasure is also the subject of Kristin Rawcliffe’s impressive fable-like oil painting 'Red Tape' (2025). Inspired by Paula Rego, Rawcliffe picks the perfect (grim) genre for the subject of benefits bureaucracy.
I take a moment to absorb the breadth and variety of the Shape Open 2025 selections. Kim Wayne Thomas's 'Attack of the Gulls' (2024) picks out protest slogans in pleasingly delicate monochrome stitchwork. While Fae Kilburn’s 'The Power of Protest' (2025) collages disabled voices past and present on a series of banners sewn together vertically, and hung like pillars. Zoe Milner's 'Deaf Community Protest Against Mainstream Political' (2023 and 2025) micro-protest piece is an arrangement of colourfully inscribed cardboard boxes, celebrating the dynamism of British Sign Language. Here, disabled creative resistance is alive and kicking.
Elora Kadir’s 'RIP Vivaldi On Hold/ Is It A Minute Or A Second' (2023) features two telephone handsets. One is blaring Vivaldi’s Spring (the hold music for the Department of Work and Pensions from 2006-2020). The other intones questions from a Personal Independence Payment assessment; the audio was too faint for my hearing aids, which added another layer to the piece. The transcript pinned to an official-looking clipboard was all I needed to feel immersed in the absurd heartlessness of benefit system bureaucracy. Tick!
I develop a soft spot for Déa Neile-Hopton’s Security Jumper (2024-2025) at first sight. This entrancing hand-knit is unravelling, it’s worn and holey stitches feature both tumbling and upright figures. We’re in a world of ups and downs! Comfort talismans invariably wear thin, but Security Jumper stands sentinel on a tailor’s dummy and has a palpable presence. It would fit right in at the current V&A Design and Disability exhibition.
There’s a content warning for Benedict Robinson’s confrontational short film, 'Steve Parker' (2023). It’s brutal, bald and utterly piercing, and the sound setting is good. 'Steve Parker' is hard to watch. This is a stylistic choice, but its power derives from its brilliant articulation and a visually perfect collaging of elements. A morality tale (spoiler alert: anyone can become disabled) with a supremely logical and satisfying story arc. Just as I wonder if the film has gone too far, Robinson reins things in for the denouement. Freelands Painting Prize Winner (2024), Robinson is a rising star.
This year’s Shape Open is a high-wire act across a bleak landscape; it offers hope in the form of creative resistance. As a rallying cry, it succeeds by holding space for mourning and reflection, but it is extremely hard-hitting in places. Some of the exhibits are crushing. The show feels intimate, yet somewhat tucked away in the vastness of the Brunel Engine Shed. I craved a lion’s share of the building and felt the lack of partition walls; the visual field was a little busy for my sensory needs. Yet, ultimately, I felt uplifted. Bentley Fox’s contemporary sides sit perfectly alongside Armstrong's archival photographs; creative resistance is what keeps us keeping on.
Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe for the latest reviews, interviews and opinion from the world of disability arts and culture. Check out our website: disabilityarts.online. See you next time!
Shape Open 2025, Rights Cuts Action: the creativity of disabled resistance
Content note: this article contains references to death and themes that may cause distress.
This year's Shape Open exhibition takes up the expansive space of High Wycombe's Brunel Engine Shed featuring work by 12 disabled artists alongside archival protest photography from Keith Armstrong. The works respond to the political backdrop continuous cuts to disability benefits and the ongoing fight for disabled people's rights in the face of oppression. Review by Sonia Boué.
Content note: this article contains references to death and themes that may cause distress.
There could only be one theme for the Shape Open 2025, and Rights Cuts Action nails it. The Brunel Engine Shed in High Wycombe is a venue that could overshadow a show – a gorgeous, vast, and lofty, retrofitted building, originally designed Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It is Grade II listed and open-plan, featuring original brickwork and ceiling-to-floor windows. It’s also more cafe than gallery, all of which could make for a tricky hang; sometimes, curtains stand in for walls.
No matter, think protest demo, and you’re there. Gaffer tape and extension cables are on view, as if to make a point. Disability can be messy, and it can happen to you. So, why are we not all screaming about benefit cuts: an existential threat made for creative resistance? Cycles of disability justice and protest history run through the exhibits with a heart-sinking sense of déjà vu. Who is watching, I wonder?
The show’s anchor is an archival display of legendary disability rights campaigner Keith Armstrong’s iconic Protest Photographs (1980s and 90s). Viewing them as scaled-up prints in the gallery brings a new dimension. There’s a fine line between documentation and art; these prints could also serve as placards, in my view. They say it all and are still needed; a digitised archive will be published online in 2026. Enduring acts of witness, they are the touchstone for this year’s selections.
Vince Laws has to take breaks when making their extraordinary 'DWP Death Makes Me Sick' shrouds (2018 ongoing). They’re painful, but Laws wants them to be seen. Job done, they’re unmissable; hung throughout the gallery like giant textile tombstones. Each brooding spectral cloth commemorates the life of a victim of the Department of Work and Pensions’ ‘hostile environment’ with a silent yet somehow screaming biography.
Anna Berry’s 'The Political is Personal' (2015) also memorialises named individuals who died due to the bedroom tax or as a result of having benefits cut. Three wreaths, constructed using party political flyers, seem light and airy from a distance. A closer look reveals a poignant act of mourning.
Ivan Riches’ Disable the Disabled, a poem set to music and film, picks up the protest baton. Acoustics in this spacious environment prove tricky. My hearing aids wrestle with the soundtrack even though I toggle to full volume. No bother, the work is transfixing; a collage of monochrome contemporary protest footage overlaid with cutouts of the artist’s unblinking eyes. I notice I’m cold. My circulatory condition (Raynaud’s) starts to kick in. There’s coffee, and the giant entrance door is kindly closed on request. The Brunel Engine Shed is so vast that I have to don my woolly hat and scarf, but I’m feeling a different kind of chill.
I need a switch of tempo, and Guy Morris's sculptures draw me in with vintage charisma and the promise of amusement. They are both playful and thought-provoking. 'You Still Make Me Crawl' (2025) is floor-based, and a crank handle is set awkwardly low. Will I have to crawl to use it? I don’t know, but I enjoy the joke, if there is one; the piece is about the relentless struggle faced by disabled people. As I stoop to turn the handle and watch a rubber band go around, I’m sold on Morris’s satirical humour. 'Sorry, Come Again' (2025) is a gloriously dysfunctional foot-operated stamping device, ridiculing the benefits system. I stamp before reading the instructions, and think I’ve broken it! I haven’t, but I find out that there’s a wooden pole if needed. 'Are We There Yet?' (2025) makes me reflect on the visual gag in contemporary art. David Shrigley comes to mind, but Morris has heft.
Samples of Emma Bentley Fox’s powerful and empowering 'Taking the PIP' (2025) portraits can be viewed online and are wonderful. In the gallery, a total of 25 portraits are projected with an old-school slide carousel; two armchairs are set at either side. Are we in the present or somewhere back in time? Overhead gallery lighting serves to wash out portraits and placards; the dynamics of erasure surface. Erasure is also the subject of Kristin Rawcliffe’s impressive fable-like oil painting 'Red Tape' (2025). Inspired by Paula Rego, Rawcliffe picks the perfect (grim) genre for the subject of benefits bureaucracy.
I take a moment to absorb the breadth and variety of the Shape Open 2025 selections. Kim Wayne Thomas's 'Attack of the Gulls' (2024) picks out protest slogans in pleasingly delicate monochrome stitchwork. While Fae Kilburn’s 'The Power of Protest' (2025) collages disabled voices past and present on a series of banners sewn together vertically, and hung like pillars. Zoe Milner's 'Deaf Community Protest Against Mainstream Political' (2023 and 2025) micro-protest piece is an arrangement of colourfully inscribed cardboard boxes, celebrating the dynamism of British Sign Language. Here, disabled creative resistance is alive and kicking.
Elora Kadir’s 'RIP Vivaldi On Hold/ Is It A Minute Or A Second' (2023) features two telephone handsets. One is blaring Vivaldi’s Spring (the hold music for the Department of Work and Pensions from 2006-2020). The other intones questions from a Personal Independence Payment assessment; the audio was too faint for my hearing aids, which added another layer to the piece. The transcript pinned to an official-looking clipboard was all I needed to feel immersed in the absurd heartlessness of benefit system bureaucracy. Tick!
I develop a soft spot for Déa Neile-Hopton’s Security Jumper (2024-2025) at first sight. This entrancing hand-knit is unravelling, it’s worn and holey stitches feature both tumbling and upright figures. We’re in a world of ups and downs! Comfort talismans invariably wear thin, but Security Jumper stands sentinel on a tailor’s dummy and has a palpable presence. It would fit right in at the current V&A Design and Disability exhibition.
There’s a content warning for Benedict Robinson’s confrontational short film, 'Steve Parker' (2023). It’s brutal, bald and utterly piercing, and the sound setting is good. 'Steve Parker' is hard to watch. This is a stylistic choice, but its power derives from its brilliant articulation and a visually perfect collaging of elements. A morality tale (spoiler alert: anyone can become disabled) with a supremely logical and satisfying story arc. Just as I wonder if the film has gone too far, Robinson reins things in for the denouement. Freelands Painting Prize Winner (2024), Robinson is a rising star.
This year’s Shape Open is a high-wire act across a bleak landscape; it offers hope in the form of creative resistance. As a rallying cry, it succeeds by holding space for mourning and reflection, but it is extremely hard-hitting in places. Some of the exhibits are crushing. The show feels intimate, yet somewhat tucked away in the vastness of the Brunel Engine Shed. I craved a lion’s share of the building and felt the lack of partition walls; the visual field was a little busy for my sensory needs. Yet, ultimately, I felt uplifted. Bentley Fox’s contemporary sides sit perfectly alongside Armstrong's archival photographs; creative resistance is what keeps us keeping on.
Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe for the latest reviews, interviews and opinion from the world of disability arts and culture. Check out our website: disabilityarts.online. See you next time!
