Colin Hambrook

I am founder/editor of www.disabilityarts.online – a unique journal for discussion of disability arts and culture. Launched in 2004, Disability Arts Online is dedicated to critiquing the artistic practice of disabled visual artists/ writers and performers, as well as playing a pivotal role in fostering networks and enabling debates around the curation and development of disability arts practice.

I was born into disability arts out of a fundamental necessity. As a disabled person my life experience has led me to accept as commonplace that everything I know and understand about who I am will be disbelieved and discredited. Being an artist is the only way I can reconcile myself with forms of exclusion that impact on my sense of self at the very core. 

My artistic practice combines word and image. Source material for image-making are gathered from prose, poetry, letters and journals. Equally my drawings practice includes the making of psychological landscapes which are the basis for writing poetry and prose.

As well as having exhibited artwork widely I am author/artist with two published illustrated poetry collections: 100 Houses, DaDaSouth (2011) and Knitting Time (Waterloo Press, 2013). 

The Deluge Collective represents an opportunity for me to develop an interest in using creative description as a way of influencing interpretation of visual arts practice, democratising how language is used. The collective also encompasses my interests in bringing performance, especially spoken word performance into the visual arts.

For further information please visit my blog at https://colinhambrook.wordpress.com