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DaDaFest International returns 8th-31st March 2025 to celebrate its 40th Anniversary and this time we are coming with ‘RAGE: A Quiet Riot’.
Earlier this year we released three commission opportunities for disabled artists to collaborate with DaDa to produce new work that would be showcased at DDFI40.
These commissions included visual art and live art commissions directly through DaDa and a digital art commission and residency at FACT through their ‘Studiolab’ artist support programme.
We are excited to announce the artists set to showcase their pioneering work as Zack Mennell, Faith Bebbington in partnership with Dr Janet Price, and Matt Allen.
These DaDa commissioned artists will be sharing a sneak preview of their work and inspiration at the DDFI40 launch event at Unity Theatre on 29th November.
So follow the booking link here to get your FREE ticket https://www.unitytheatreliverpool.co.uk/whats-on/dadafest-international-40-launch/
Read more about our brilliant DDFI40 commissioned artists below.
Zack Mennell – Live Art Commission
Zack Mennell is an emerging self-taught artist whose lived experiences shape their multidisciplinary practice. Using performance, photography, and writing, they explore queerness and neurodivergence in relation to presence and visibility. Their photographic work is strictly analogue, employing 35mm film to document performance and live events.
In 2022, Zack was commissioned to create their first solo work as part of Tidechangers, a development programme for early career artists by Totally Thames/The Thames Festival Trust. They frequently collaborate with performance artist MarO'Brienrien, integrating care with artistic co-performance and photographic documentation. Their partnership has led to performances at notable institutions and festivals across the UK and Europe, including Whitechapel Gallery, SPILL Festival (2016), and ICA London (2021).
They are a member of the Bethlem Artist Collective, Liberty Advisory Group, The Other MA (TOMA) 24/25 cohort and a studio holder at Triangle LGBTQ+ Cultural Centre. They were part of the 2021 cohort of "The Sunday Skool for Misfits, Experimenters and Dissenters" at VSSL studio.
Faith Bebbington and Dr Janet Price – Visual Art Commission
Faith Bebbington is an artist sculptor based in Liverpool since 1991. Since then, she has developed a national reputation and often works across the UK. Faith’s artistic practice initially stemmed from having cerebral palsy, a disability that made her curious about how people and animals move. She explores this through figurative sculptures that play with balance, the process of falling, and capturing sequences of movement whether human or animal.
Being a Black British, queer woman artist with a Jamaican, West African heritage also influences her creative output, rather than being the current focus of her work.
Faith made sculptures using fibreglass resin as her main medium until 2014, when after surviving ‘terminal’ cancer she decided to shift her focus to more sustainable, environmentally friendly ways of working.
Her large sculptures use urban waste, often thousands of plastic milk bottles; in order to make a strong impact. Clients such as Veolia - environmental waste management company, ITV and the FA / Wembley, have commissioned Faith to create recycled plastic sculptures to spearhead campaigns and raise awareness of endangered species, plastic pollution and the climate crisis.
Faith has developed new work combining plastics with locally sourced, natural materials, like bamboo harvested from Ness Gardens as part of the Imagine Bamboo project. During a recent Metal UK artist residency in Portugal, she experimented with cane and vines to create temporary sculptures inspired by nature.
Dr Janet Price is a disabled queer feminist, based in Liverpool, UK with links to Taranaki, New Zealand. Janet is an activist and writer, who has a commitment to using art as a way of building intersectional connections and communities across disability, gender, sexuality, race & class.
Janet’s love of art and commitment to activism led herto become a member of the board of DaDaFest until 2023 where she built a strong commitment to and understanding of access in Disability Arts. Whilst there, Janet also worked with previous Chief Exec Ruth Gould to organise a visit of UK Disability artists with a coalition of disability artists/activists in India/South Asia.
Over many years, Janet has been interested in and worked with textiles, creating fibre art pieces that relate to the depths of our natural world. Increasingly Janet draws upon the history and reworking of old textiles, looking to their origins in the wild and to colonial impacts upon fibre production, drawn to fibre art that challenges the injustice of power and its intersectional unwrapping.
Janet sees art as a primary route towards community, to new ways of understanding and experiencing the world. Disability, race, gender/sexuality, class and nature are at the centre of the disruption our perspectives need, and social justice is where we will find our answers.
Matt Allen – Digital Art Commission
Matt Allen Matt’s practice explores dreams, reality and anxiety. His work sits between video games, live performances and visual art, having previously created artworks for performances, live art events and festivals. As a disabled artist making work about his lived experience, Matt’s practice draws upon autobiographical material to create interactive artworks. For this residency, supported in partnership with DaDa, Matt will create a new digital artwork about myalgic encephalomyelitis (M.E.) and chronic fatigue.
Matt is the artist working on the FACT residency produced in partnership with DaDa and Lucid Games. These artist residencies are part of our commitment to supporting emerging artists working at the intersection of games, culture, art and technology. All four artists are in the early stages of their careers and are based in the North of England. The residencies will provide a unique opportunity for the selected artists to develop their practice, create new work and display their artworks in Art Plays Games (on display until 27 April 2025). The selected artist for the DaDa residency will also have the opportunity to showcase their work as part of DaDaFest International in March 2025.