Auslan Art Educator to tour for Foto Biennale

AUSLAN Art Educator Irene Holub is coming to the Art Gallery of Ballarat next week to run a tour of the People Power – Planton exhibition as part of the Foto Biennale.

The session will be accessible in Auslan, Australian Sign Language, for deaf and hard of hearing people to engage with the works in the exhibition and take part in group discussion.

“My experience accessing galleries in the past was without interpreters, without access to language and it was very limited,” said Ms Holub.

“I studied Fine Arts at RMIT and that really opened me to art and the perspective of visiting more and more galleries and understanding more about art and the stories behind them.

“I really wanted that to be accessible for everybody.”

After working with the National Gallery of Victoria to increase accessibility, Ms Holub then began to shift her focus to regional areas like Ballarat.

“I approached a few of the galleries in the area and Ballarat was very supportive and they really understood that it was an excellent idea,” she said.

“Ballarat began continually offering the Auslan tours because people were really enjoying the tours and they were getting booked out.”

Art Gallery of Ballarat Director Louise Tegart said it is important for the gallery to be an inclusive space.

“We are keen to make our Gallery exhibitions as accessible and inviting as we can, and one way of doing that is to provide Auslan tours which we are making a regular feature for our major exhibitions,” she said.

“We are very happy that BIFB have agreed to jointly present this tour by offering free entry to the People Power–Platon exhibition”.

Ms Holub said she hopes into the future more art galleries will put on these sorts of tours regularly.

“In the future I’d like to increase these tours and have different tours available to show the community,” she said.

“The Art Gallery of Ballarat are providing these tours regularly and I’m hoping other galleries will see this and follow their path.”

The tour will take place on Sunday 8 October from 2pm and to book a spot visit bit.ly/46lWPbv.