Tony Heaton OBE foregrounds disability rights with ‘altered’ at Bury Art Museum

On display at Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre until 25th June, altered is an affecting, career-spanning catalogue featuring the work of celebrated sculptor and disability rights activist, Tony Heaton OBE. From his earliest work to recent creations, including his initiation of the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive, this free and fascinating showcase is thoroughly worth the tram ride into North Manchester from the city centre.

Praised by Northern Soul for its ‘structured instability’, altered chronicles Heaton’s creative journey from his early, playful takes on environmental art to a gradual incorporation of the pressures, both sociopolitical and existential, on differently abled bodies, which he expresses through subtle uncanny tweaks – alterations – to the objects in his art.

His oeuvre flits between the broad and the intimate, from pyramids of collection boxes and giant modified Polo mints to Gold Lamé, a work centred around an ancient standard-issue ‘Invacar’ wheelchair which was provided by the NHS until the 1980s, coated with gold foil in a playful transmutation of the arcane term ‘lame’. Among the most recent pieces on display are stone carvings of benches without legs, wherein the subjects support themselves.

For more info on altered, exhibitions and accessibility, head to the Bury Art Museum website.