Tony Heaton OBE
Tony Heaton OBE is a renowned disability rights activist and
artist working in sculpture, performance, and film. He explores his experience
as a disabled person and the everyday interactions he and other disabled people
have with the material and non-material world. Often working in a cyclical
thread, Heaton revisits past works, adding subtle layers and playing with irony
to explore the notion that disabled people often seem visible or “other”.During a residency at The Art House, Wakefield, Heaton continued his practice in stone carving, as well as experimenting with printing in the print studios to produce the series ‘Suite: Fruits’. The culmination of the residency was Heaton’s solo exhibition ‘Altered’ at The Art House in 2019, which has since toured at Bury Art Museum, Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool, and Attenborough Arts Centre in Leicester.
Heaton has exhibited nationally and internationally, with his work including public and private collections across the UK. Some or his artworks directly relate to his disability activism and his initiation of the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive, both which he was awarded an OBE in 2013 for his services to the arts and disability arts movement. In 2024 Heaton collaborated in the Shape Arts, Crip Arte Spazio: The DAM, in Venice, which is currently touring the UK, starting at the Attenborough Arts Centre Leicester.
Suite: Fruits
Image Description:
Exhibition photograph of a series of five multi-coloured prints in different bold colours, each depicting the same image of an enlarged ‘Fruit Loop’ sweet (a variant of a mint POLO). The fruit loop is inscribed with ‘Loop’ filling majority of the frame and sits diagonally across it. The five prints sit in a row on a white background. Image credit: Harry Meadley.
Audio Description:
‘Suite Fruits’ is a set of works based on the Polo sweet, using bright and bold colours, and magnified to larger than life-size. The artist talks about ‘connectedness’ as a key thread running through his work in more or less visible ways, and that connectedness can be said to come to the fore quite literally in his sweet hoops that spell out ‘LOOP’ instead of ‘POLO’.
‘Suite: Repeat (Revolution)
Image Description:
Installation photo of ‘Suite: Repeat’ a vinyl Installation of giant ‘Fruit Loops’ sweets (a variant of a ‘POLO’), with the embossed word ‘LOOP’ instead of ‘POLO’ in the colours pink, blue, green, red, yellow, and purple. Installed on the rotating doors of the Broadcasting Place building B occupied by the Fine Art Department and others at Leeds Beckett University. Image credits: Harry Meadley.
Audio Description:
‘Suite: Repeat’ is a set of works based on the Polo sweet, using bright and bold colours, and magnified to larger than life-size. The artist talks about ‘connectedness’ as a key thread running through his work in more or less visible ways, and that connectedness can be said to come to the fore quite literally in his sweet hoops that spell out ‘LOOP’ instead of ‘POLO’.
External Links:
Instagram: www.instagram.com/tonyheaton1/
Website: www.tonyheaton.co.uk/index.html