REET GOOD was an electric, dynamic and trail blazing event of Live Performance Art that seeks to break down barriers, challenge preconceptions and boldly centre and illuminate the work of Deaf, Disabled and Nuerodivergent Artists. 

The core mission of REET GOOD was to empower Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent artists to articulate and develop their individual praxis within a temporary autonomous environment of co-creation and collective sharing.

Reet Good, was the culmination of a four day co-creation and collective sharing of artistic practice between six Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent artists, which took place at Derby Theatre. The artists who were provided much needed space to share, create and reimagine work within the context of the Derby City Landscape. 

A Live Performance Art sharing of REET GOOD was presented at Derby QUAD on Friday 18th February 2021 from 7:00pm – 22:00pm BST time.

Credits

Produced by: SPILL YER TEA

Curated by: Pierce Starre

Photographer: Marcin Sz

Videographer: Richard Swainson

Support

In partnership with Derby QUAD, Derby Theatre & Heart of Glass.

Commissioned by UK New Artists through its Future Producers Programme

Supported using public funding from Arts Council England

SAMM SHACKLETON

Samm Shackleton is a visual artist and recovering alcoholic working across performance, moving image, and writing. Their practice draws on lived experience of addiction and recovery, exploring liminal spaces through queer, meditative rituals, process-led methods, and site-specific performance. Grounded in relationships with drug and alcohol service users, their work gives visibility to excluded experiences without sensationalising them. After a decade in active addiction, Samm is now 15 months sober. Recent projects include a public offering at ]performance space[, Folkestone, performances at Art Core Gallery, Derby, and assisting Shabnam Shabazi’s performance at SPILL Festival.

Artist: Samm Shackleton, Collective Utterances, REET GOOD, 2021. Photographer: Marcin Sz

GEMMA MARMALADE

Gemma Marmalade is a contemporary British artist and has completed doctoral research in 2022 titled: In A Manner of Speaking: The Subversive Voice in Performative Art at the Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University. Gemma is also an academic in critical and experimental approaches to Photography, and Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Photography at the University of Derby. Gemma’s practice is exhibited widely, including Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Marjorie Barrick Museum, Las Vegas; The Apulia Film Commission, Bari; and the State Museum of Gulag, Moscow. Her work specialises in photography, video, and performance which playfully negotiate the authenticity of speech acts, history, and science with queer politics. 

Artist: Gemma Marmalade, In A Manner of Speaking, REET GOOD, 2021. Photographer: Marcin Sz

PAULA CLARKE

Paula Clarke is a performance artist based in Northern Ireland. Her work, which mines Deaf history, has explored the damaging affects of oralism on the Deaf community and its fight to use its suppressed minority language. Alongside artist Jane O’Brien, Paula produced and performed “The Naked Hands” at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast 2021, which was directed by critically acclaimed performance artist Amanda Coogan. In collaboration with Amanda she also performed in Run to the Rock at the  Belfast International Arts Festival (2016). Other performance works include Talk Real Fine Just Like a Lady at Peacock Theatre in Dublin (2017) and Don’t Fence Me In with Kids In Control, Belfast (2021)

Artist: Paula Clarke, Collective Utterances, REET GOOD, 2021. Photographer: Marcin Sz

ALICE COLQUHOUN

Alice Colquhoun is a neurodiverse performance artist who is interested in ways performance is able to make witness of the personal and political and the ways these become entangled. Her live performance work employs listening, contemplation and voice alongside movement and text. Alice has performed her work internationally at The Centre for Humanities in Utrecht and Roma Tre University in Rome and has collaborated on projects with Cardboard Citizens Music Ensemble, Rebecca Mackenzie, and Amy Sharrocks for the Live Art Development Agency. 

Artist: Alice Colquhoun, The Loom, REET GOOD, 2021. Photographer: Marcin Sz

PIERCE STARRE

Pierce Starre is an artist based in Liverpool whose multidisciplinary practice emerges from the complex and shifting intersections of their lived experience as a non binary, queer, working-class, neurodivergent individual raised by Deaf parents who communicate using British Sign Language. Their practice seeks to examine the heteronormative, neuronormative, ableist and capitalist narratives that shape how lives are understood and valued. Drawing from lived experience alongside a critical engagement with cultural, historical and contemporary discourses, their work spans live performance, sculpture, textiles, objects, text, and still and moving images to create immersive experiences that foster connection, reflection, discussion and transformative possibilities.

Artist: Pierce Starre, Head Full Knees Buckle, REET GOOD, 2021. Photographer: Marcin Sz

NIAMH MEEHAN

Niamh Seana Meehan is a visual artist based in the UK working in-between visual art, performance, writing. Her practice sets up sites to investigate the slippages involved with the translation of thought to text. Textual projects Niamh creates often wants to jump off the page to form rhythms, movements, or patterns for repetition. These qualities become catalysts for discussion and by implementing performative methods it enables them to anticipate their narrative. Will they be a performance, an audio work, a sculpture or remain textual? On-going interests within my practice include ambiguity, nothingness, doubts, and failure. Recently Niamh’s practice has been centred around using floating as a methodology to think through things. Recent works include; Is it safe to float with Live Art Ireland and MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY, short residencies with Ps2.

Artist: Niamh Meehan, Collective Utterances, REET GOOD, 2021. Photographer: Marcin Sz