Tate Liverpool to host DaDa-inspired art intervention

Tate Liverpool will take part in a giant UK-wide ‘intervention’ by disabled artists this weekend.

Artist Alistair Gentry will spend the day at the Royal Albert Dock venue as part of We Are Invisible We Are Visible, a nationwide event organised by disabled-led visual arts organisation DASH.

Tate is one of 30 museums and galleries involved in the Saturday, July 2 event which will see disabled, D/deaf or neurodivergent artists create work inspired by the disruptive spirit of Dada, absurdism and Surrealism.

Gentry’s artistic intervention, 25% Rectification, references the fact that nearly a quarter of people in the UK identify as disabled, neurodivergent or D/deaf, but we also don’t see them as subjects of art a quarter of the time.

He will perform his ‘rectifications’ on reproductions of famous works in the Tate collection, adding items such as hearing aids, wheelchairs, prosthetics, guide dogs and medication to works like Rodin’s The Kiss and Hogarth’s The Painter and His Pug.

London-based Gentry, whose inspiration comes from folklore, magic, silly costumes, museums and absurdity, says: “Taking a lead from Marcel Duchamp I’m going to literally draw this missing large minority into the picture.

“That’s where the ‘rectification’ comes in, since this is how Duchamp referred to the found objects he’d turned into new art works by altering or defacing them.”

We Are Invisible We Are Visible (WAIWAV) marks the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the disability arts movement and the 102nd anniversary of the 1st Dada International Exhibition in Berlin, and asks the question - what if the Dada movement had started in 2020 in lockdown? What would they have done? Is now a timely moment to resurrect the spirit and essence of Dada?

See Alistair Gentry at Tate Liverpool this Saturday, July 2 from 10am to 4pm.