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Exhibition Press Release: Weft

An exhibition of works by David Johnson, Emma Louise Dickson, Simon Croft, Harri Harrison, Phil Illingworth and Xavier White

The Barn, St Paul’s Walden Bury, Hitchin, Hertfordshire, SG4 8BP 9-16 May 2026 Opening times: 10am-4pm daily Working with the architecture of a restored 18th-century barn in the grounds of St Paul’s Walden Bury, near Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, local blind artist David Johnson has created a site-specific installation that gives expression to the blind experience of being in enclosed space and the built environment. To this end, he has constructed a series of lattice work, web-like planes made from stretched cord attached to vertical and horizontal timbers. A loose arrangement of warp and weft has created very open and irregular textile patterning that has far more air than fabric within. These structures are arranged around the interior space of the barn as well as, on occasion, moving beyond the perimeter walls. They divide up the space into irregular areas and channel visitors’ movements in unexpected ways, with the main door leading to a cul de sac, forcing the visitor to retrace their steps and re-enter through the smaller back entrance. The open, porous construction of the stretched cord lattices means that the sight lines and the acoustic character of the space is nuanced. The cords themselves create shafts of solid light. Interacting with Johnson’s lattice work, five selected artists are showcasing works which resonate with the themes of the disrupted, disabled experience, an integrated sensorium, and the fragility of life and all we take for granted. Emma Dickson’s weaving and block print transform small organic forms into large geometric works that encourage people to find the majestic in the miniature. The pieces explore colour and pattern often unseen or overlooked in the apparently ordinary nature that surrounds us. While these pieces are flat, visitors are welcome to explore the tactility of the pieces. Phil Illingworth’s three-dimensional paintings challenge space and presumption based on appearance. The pink tips of the spikes in Carry Moonbeams Home In A Jar offer an intentional contrast to the genuine threat. The Martyrdom of St Agatha has previously been experienced by touch by a visually-impaired visitor, who knew the piece was striped because of the nearly intangible difference in feel between paint of one colour and another. Finally, 3,2,3 is an experimental drawing which takes the notion of the transformation of an object from three dimensions to two, and then back into three dimensions (animal > hide > object). The drawing is suspended chrysalis-like by the same thread which stitches the sides together. Please feel free to touch these works. Xavier White’s precarious Verrelic Spires, made from recycled found glass, echo the fragility of a life held in the balance. As a brain injury survivor, White strives to creatively explore mind-expanding concepts in his practice. His slowbiles, which hang from the beams above, mirror the chandeliers already in place, and dance in the light as their slinky springs coil and recoil. Both of White’s series are tactile, as he hands the works over to the public to influence their fate. Simon Croft’s oversized fairy wand (not to be touched due to the sharpness of the mirror fragments) sits in one of the enclosed spaces created by Johnson’s lattice. The words, its title, Be Careful What You Wish For, hang nearby, made of layers of dried PVA – to be touched, but to be eroded in the process. Inside Out, Outside In, a set of mirror-mosaiced Russian dolls, sit nearby, again speaking to the fragility and self-reflexive nature of identity. Who sees what and when? And if you cannot see? Contrasting starkly with Croft’s wand are Harri Harrison’s much smaller wands made from natural materials found on walks in the urban landscape. Their work explores notions of place, community, grief, gratitude, and belonging, offering an invitation to reconsider our relationship to nature and future communities. What does it mean to have a ‘sense of place’, and what happens when this is disrupted? Further works by Johnson are dotted around the space, including Feedback and Severely Sheep Impaired (after a poem by John Darker). Please note, all the works in this exhibition are audio-described, and the audio-description can be listened to by pressing the button beside the work. Anna McNay, curator, said: ‘When putting together this exhibition I was driven primarily by the search for good quality art, but it is amazing how many artists and works turned out to have embedded stories of adversity or disability. I hope this experiential exhibition will provide insight into the quotidian of so many people.’ David Johnson said: ‘A weaver’s loom with a complex and disrupted arrangement of warp and weft provides a powerful metaphor for the altered aesthetics that blindness and disability afford us. This exhibition within an exhibition gives free rein to how altered bodies and altered minds rearrange the world and reflect it back to anyone prepared to embrace difference.’ Saturday 9th & Monday 11th – Saturday 16th: entrance free, 10am-4pm; entrance to garden £8, 10am-5pm, see stpaulswaldenbury.co.uk Sunday 10th: entrance with ticket to NGS open garden only, see stpaulswaldenbury.co.uk

Beyond the Visual, Henry Moore Institute I believe lots of people, when they hold a biscuit, they will also see a biscuit. If they're sighted, perhaps they might want to try closing their eyes and concentrating on that mental experience. This, I think, demonstrates the inherent connectivity between the sensory faculties that we, I think, awkwardly and artificially separate them out as being, the five sensory faculties. But I think they're all kind of one, really. And all of them are within each other. They're all connected at a very fundamental level. I like to think that my artwork, perhaps demonstrates that connectivity, and helps people to make those sensory connections, which can get lost in our visually biased contemporary lives.


Nuggets of Embodiment Photograph by Rob Harris. Beyond the Visual, 28 November 25 - 19 April 26, Henry Moore Institute. In partnership with @unioftheartslondon @chelseaual and @shapearts Supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council @ahrcpress’s Exhibition Fund.  
Layers of Vision, King's College London With visual impairment, whether acquired or congenital, there is limited or no access to mirrors and photographic images of the self. As such the visually impaired person has a diminished or non-existent knowledge of their own body as an icon or object. Using the remarkable accuracy of digital 3D print technology, this piece grants access for the first time ever for the blind artist to his own body as an art object. This installation consists of an assemblage of 3D printed figures and scaffolding. It is a triptych of scaled down figures of the artist moving through a strongly delineated and layered space. The figures are framed with layers of scaffolding that are a parody of gallery casements without the usual protective glass. This piece grants every visitor access to the touchable figures. As such it offers all visitors, sight disabled or otherwise, something close to equality of access.
   
I As Object Un-Seen, 2022, 3D Printing and scaffolding. Commissioned and exhibited as part of Layers of Vision, Kings College London 2022.  
Liberty Festival, London Sanctuary Café – Sit and have a drink with Stella!
This interactive and accessible installation is presented here to the Liberty Festival committee and to the people of Lewisham. The piece is a blend of the ordinary and the extraordinary; it consists of a life sized human figure sitting at a ready-made but significantly altered picnic table. The figure depicted is a 3D print of a well-known Lewisham based community worker – Stella Headley. Stella is shown drinking, eating and engaged in conversation. The other seats around the table are empty and visitors are warmly invited to sit with Stella and with friends and enjoy refreshments and a conversation. By so doing the boundary between the art and the beholders becomes blurred and ambiguous; the monumental statue has climbed down from its lofty, inaccessible plinth. The table has been significantly altered in order to make it accessible for wheelchairs, buggies and infirm visitors. On the table are some cast objects that mimic ordinary café table clutter. The table includes a plaque together with some embedded braille that briefly describes Stella’s life and her work for the people of Lewisham. Stella Headley has worked tirelessly and generously for the under-privileged of Lewisham since her childhood. She has an amazing passion for getting things done for the community. Stella has been involved in several food projects in Lewisham and her passion ensures no one knowingly goes hungry in the borough. She frequently goes beyond the food remit of a project in order to make deeper human connections with those she is helping. Stella says: I am Sistah Stella Headley, I am Rastafari, and from a Black Caribbean family.  I am the youngest of five sisters, and was born in a council house in Sydenham in Lewisham, in the 1960’s. Growing up was often quite rough and tough as we were the only Black Caribbean family in our area.  There was a lot of racism in those days and not a day would go past and you don’t experience something negative.  It made us resilient though, and us 5 girls were formidable, WE stood up to racism and inequality from then right up until now.

‘Sanctuary Cafe’ 2022. 3D Printed. Commissioned as part of Liberty Festival, Lewisham London Borough of Culture 2022. Shown on display in Deptford Lounge Library, 2026.

https://londonist.com/london/art-and-photography/lewisham-borough-culture-2022-d-deaf-disabled-neurodivergent-artists


91DIVOC, Gallery@oxo, London Touch Me Not
Touch, perhaps the most fundamental of our senses, has been in short supply during the pandemic. Touch Me Not is about touching and not touching. The giant pears presented here don’t quite touch each other and yet visitors are warmly invited to gently touch them to experience their texture and their shape as best they can (please hand sanitise before and after touching). The pears are nearly identical in form, they were machined out of polystyrene and the machine was controlled by an algorithm which was created from a digital scan of a real Conference pear. I didn’t touch these pears at all until the finishing stages of production when myself and my studio assistant sanded down the surface and coated them with plaster and finally painted them.

David with his artwork ‘A Pair of Pear Shaped Pears’ 2021, part of Touch Me Not, 91DIVOC at Gallery@OXO 2021.  
There's something lurking in the shadow that might be interesting, RCA School of Arts and Humanities MPhil/PhD Research Exhibition, London     A series of twenty small mounds of cast Silicone measuring approximately 5 cms in diameter by 2-3 cms high. These Silicone mounds are lurid pink in colour, and each have an individual, amorphous shape that caricatures used, discarded chewing gum.   Importantly the lumps of Silicone are currently stuck to the under-side of a small café table in the Dyson café at RCA, Battersea. The lumps of Silicone are placed together on the underside of one small table and arranged in Braille configuration spelling the word ‘inhibition’. They reference the ubiquitous presence of used, discarded chewing gum found in public places stuck to the ‘hidden’ surfaces of tables and chairs.     Relevance to Research My research examines the experience of blindness and how art can be used to express it. So, the ‘Inhibition’ piece interrogates the fact that to a blind person, the under-surface of objects is less clearly ‘under’ or ‘hidden’.  This is because, for a blind person, shadows are not apparent. Generally speaking, the upper surface of an object is no more revealing than the lower surface; examining an object by touch alone renders the surfaces of equal prominence. So, the discarded chewing gum fails to be hidden in the same way as it might be hidden visually. This is a powerful example of ‘blind-aesthetic’ and ‘blindness gain’.


‘Inhibition’ 2019. Part of There’s something lurking in the shadows that might be interesting, RCA School of Arts & Humanities MPhil/PhD Research Exhibition 2019
Red Man in White Cage on Green Hill, Hitchin ‘Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains’ – Rousseau  
For two long hot days I sat with my installation in the blazing sunlight in a prominent spot in a public park situated in the middle of my home town. The installation consists of a large white-painted scaffolding cage containing a life-sized, naked, shop mannequin painted a lurid and shocking red colour. As the burning sun beat down on me as I sat next to the cage I gradually became a second red-man mimicking the red man in the scaffolding cage! I unwittingly  became part of the installation  echoing in life what I’d created as artifice. Now I origianally conceived of this piece as a stark visual ‘icon’ – I thought it would be a striking and simple image to place a large white cage containing a red figure on lush and radiant green grass! The heat-wave put paid to the ‘lush’ grass. As time passed a deeper significance emerged post hoc from the event… Being human is about being constrained, or confined, or having limitations on us that restrict us in some way. These limitations are on an infinitely variable spectrum and range from the strictures of social  convention or etiquette through to the damaging effects of disease or disability and then on to the harmful effects of false or unjust imprisonment. The vertical bars on the cage are widely spaced thus allowing for the safe and easy ingress and egress to and from this caricature cage. This could be thought of as standing for the freedom or autonomy we all have on occasion, to accept or reject life’s shackles. Throughout the two-day event a series of performers used the cage as a platform to play, sing, recite or rant. Thanks so much to musicians Ian Day, the Sukis, George Howe and Alison and The Mighty Collider; Poets Rose Saliba, Jackie Lord, David Vancauster and a host of children using the cage as bolt hole or photo-op. Thanks to you all for ‘breathing life’ into the inert steel, plastic and paint that is the stuff of this installation!

‘Red Man in White Cage’ 2018, Hitchin.
The Art of Access, London  Finding words to describe the effing ineffable!
I attended a conference in London a couple of weeks ago called ‘The Art of Access’. The conference brought together visually impaired people, artists, educators and professional audio describers for an intensive day of talking, listening, and coffee and sandwich consumption! The conference sought to give air time to new thinking, current thinking, and best practice in the realm of giving the visually impaired access to the visual. I think the gathering was a great success with some very memorable moments.
Hoary old audio description issues were revisited: the pros and cons of subjective versus objective audio description of the arts, the risks and rewards of ‘bolt on’ versus integrated access to the arts , the costs and benefits of new technologies as applied to access.
The reason I am writing about this here is because of the contribution made to the conference by the professional audio describer and author of a new book on the subject, Louise Fryer. Her summary of what she considers important in audio description sits very comfortably with my own ideas on the subject.
Louise emphasised the importance of using simple language when describing the arts to the blind. Ordinary words should be employed to convey extraordinary visual phenomena. She emphasised the importance of communicating the effect of the object being described. She stressed that at bottom ‘emotion’ is the common currency between describer and listener. To this end she quoted Olafur Eliasson and called for conveying the ‘felt thought’ when trying to find the words to describe what you are seeing. Louise also stressed the importance of understanding the nature of ‘art’ itself as a prerequisite for describing art to others. So the describer is not a disinterested conduit through which a blind spectator ‘sees’ the object. Rather he/she is an involved participant in a triangular relationship between object, describer and blind person with emotion being the medium of exchange.
Reflections on trip to New York; Boston, Transcultural Exchange; Montreal, 2016 New York
On arriving in New York
I tried not to show how excited I was!
With my baggage of decades of the media version of New York in tow on little rolling casters,
Now to compare it with the reality that enveloped me
with its strange and yet familiar soundtrack,
Left me with a stoopid smile that took hours to wipe.

Soon to meet a distant cousin in a busy Jazz bar.
We drank beer, laughed and hurriedly caught up before Alice left again for Florida.
The cool jazz filled the air and my head and the full force of the music tradition that is so much a part of me suddenly struck.
I struggled to hold on to composure as we talked of food and plans and ordinary things like that.

Next morning we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art
A huge box of delights impossible to take in very much.
So with Deborah our guide we decided to focus on ancient Egyptian sculpture.
My bare fingers felt the time-blasted shapes,
The cool stone worked into clear, smooth exotic lines
Homages to animals, life and death and human frailty and uncertainty.
The occasional moment of naturalism gave way to
Predominantly formal and stylised shapes clearly saying
‘Read me, listen to me, touch me, feel me’
‘I speak of eternity and of the preservation of an ordering of the world’.

Next The Tenement Museum gave us dramatized encounters with the history of immigration in New York,
Vast movements of folk in search of a better life
And so resonant of today’s precarious boat people
And the desperate crowds daily pushing and straining at the closing borders of Europe.

Next day we were drawn to Modern Art’s Golden Temple The Museum of Modern Art.
Here we met in person the mighty super-heroes of the modernist American dream
Now asleep and quietly surveyed and talked about in hushed tones so as not to wake them from their slumbers.
Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol rest in peace here and dream a dream of a new reality that never came to pass.

Boston

Fabulous Florian’s six-pack met in Boston at a conference.
We talked a lot in that old, cold city,
And I think we got to know each other a little better there.

We spoke of our message of lost and found in disability
To those who’d gathered to listen:
Through loss we can find good things
Yes we lose our sight but through that loss we see more clearly the light of a deeper understanding of the human condition
Someone once said: ‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
are sweeter’;[1]
The shadow of what was once seen, or the echo of what was once heard leaves an indelible imprint on the mind.
That imprint contains the essence of that thing and there’s no better way to show this than through the various arts.

There followed a day of more personal encounters with other artists
Which gave the whole a more human touch.
Saying ‘hi’ and sharing personal art dreams with another
Energized the whole event for me at least.

Late one afternoon my brother and I walked the cold common and found the warmth of a Starbucks where glorious American soul music was playing;
Meant as background sound it shouldered its way to my foreground.
Easy, coffee-flavoured chat was made easier by the familiar rhythms
Fun fun fun funky syncopations
Cut up the air into wonderful shapes and reconstructed time in a manner that was way off the beat track!

The evening before leaving for New York our hard hostel softened when we finally found the on-switch for the heating!
……… to be continued
[1] Keats, J. , Ode to Grecian Urn

   
Montreal

   
 IVLA - Engaging the Senses, Montreal ‘Hands On’ exhibition
Works by Rosalyn Driscoll and David Johnson, an event of the International Visual Literacy Association, hosted by the Community + Differential Mobilities Cluster, curated by Florian Grond, 6 -8 October 2016, Concordia University, Montreal.

David standing with the artworks displayed on a long table
David with Florian Grond, Piet Devos and Hannah Thompson behind a table displaying ‘Remote Feelings’.
David in conversation with Rosalyn Driscol in the gallery space.
Too Big to Feel, Royal Holloway, University of London
The braille spells out the phrase ‘Seeing Red’, which is an emotional response to the social divisions in modern Britain. Since the braille is too big for the blind to understand the piece stands as a playful reminder to everyone that the communication of true meaning too often fails in language. The piece also raises questions about the meaning and purpose of art and by extension about the human condition more generally. By means of striking visual and tactile contrasts ‘Too Big to Feel’ attempts to make the point that the experience of blindness is in many ways analogous to wider non-disabled experience. It shows that blindness can be a creative and exciting way of being in the world which has much to teach sighted people about invention, autonomy and communication.