On Crip Art Practices: ‘A Reluctant Vanguard’

Join us for a panel discussion and readings on crip artistic practice today. This event is part of the programme for Flare-Up and will include an opportunity to view the exhibition and experience Leah Clements’s commission, Pure Joy (2026).

The panel will explore how the term ‘crip’ – and the verb ‘cripping’ – is used in contemporary art practice. It will consider it as a method, identity, political position, strategy for survival, aesthetic approach, and mode of production.

Led by curator Yates Norton, artists Leah Clements and Jameisha Prescod, and academic David Ruebain will take part in two sessions, split by readings from artist Abi Palmer.

The first session will look at crip discourse in historical and contemporary contexts, including social and political conditions, geography, and healthcare systems, as well as shifts over the past decade and the impact of the pandemic.

The second will focus on art-making. It will look at form and language in relation to crip practice, including themes such as temporality, opacity, fluidity, fragmentation, and interruption. It will consider how embodied experiences such as stuttering, brain fog, fatigue, and chronic pain can shape artistic form. Anchored in works from Flare-Up, the panel will ask whether there are crip aesthetics or poetics, and what they might be.

Closed captioning will be provided.

This event is supported by Knotenpunkt.

BIOGRAPHIES

Yates Norton is a curator and writer based in London (UK) and serves as Strategic and Curatorial Advisor to Knotenpunkt. His work explores the relationship between artistic practice, interdisciplinary research, and social commitment. Previously, he was curator at the Roberts Institute of Art (RIA), where he worked with the residency programme, commissioned new performances and curated exhibitions with the David and Indre Roberts Collection. Norton is committed to disability justice, collaborating closely with David Ruebain, the current Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Sussex (UK). Together, they have presented their work at various arts and educational settings, including the ICA and the Serpentine in London (UK). Educated at the University of Cambridge (UK), Harvard University (US), and the Courtauld Institute of Art (UK), Norton has guest lectured at both Boston and Cambridge Universities. He has written regularly on artists' practices and has published with Phaidon, The Chicago Review, Chisenhale Books and others.

Leah Clements is an artist from and based in London whose practice spans film, photography, performance, writing, installation, and other media to find moments of transcendence. Her work is concerned with the relationship between psychological, emotional, and physical states, often through personal accounts of unusual or hard-to-articulate experiences. Her practice also focuses on sickness/cripness/disability in art, and how real and imaginary realms can operate as radical spaces to address collective experiences. She is currently the first Artist-in-Residence at Greenwich Park, London, and was the 1st prize recipient of the 2023 Mosaic Art Award, Hauser & Wirth, London, as well as the first Artist-in-Residence at Serpentine Galleries, London (2020-21). Recent projects include her solo shows INSOMNIA, South Kiosk, London (2022-23); The Siren of the Deep, Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2021); and Apophenia, Peer, London (2026), which will tour to Arts Catalyst, Sheffield. Upcoming projects include a new permanent artwork commissioned by Bethlem for a new London hospital.

Jameisha Prescod FRSA is an artist-filmmaker and writer from South London. With work grounded in a research-based practice, Jameisha explores how culture, identity, black history and colonialism influence the way illnesses are experienced. Their work reimagines how disabled stories and history can be archived in more experimental ways.

David Ruebain is Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Free Speech Officer and Professor of Culture, Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Sussex and Chair of Panel of the Premier League's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Standard (PLEDIS). David is a past winner of RADAR’s People of the Year Award for Achievement in the Furtherance of Human Rights of Disabled People in the UK. He has also been named as one of the 25 Most Influential Disabled People in the UK by Disability Now Magazine. In 2023, with Yates Norton, he co-curated the online exhibition Beholding Relations: An Exploration of Disability, Oppression and Liberation for Unit London Gallery.