When Amy Claire Mills was at art school less than five years ago, one of her lecturers dissuaded her against identifying her art practice in relation to disability or illness. Living with cystic fibrosis, Mills was driven to make work reflecting her experience and politics. Regardless of any past advice, Mills considers herself a “disabled artist” an important distinction she stipulates. 

Leaving art school, Mills made an impact with bold feminist performance installation works, some undertaken with a collective she co-founded, Show Us Your Teeth. Her witty use of text in textile works initially emerged as part of the costume and production design elements of these earlier works. 

Her solo exhibition Unsolicited Advice! at Firstdraft in January 2021 and inclusion in No Show at Carriageworks in February 2021 attracted a great deal of buzz among audiences in Sydney. Whimsical, colourful and interactive, her textile works reference and subvert quilting conventions by incorporating witty fragments of text and conversations that Mills has observed and collected that relate to social perceptions of disability. Looking at language and how we communicate, Mills deconstructs ableism through objects of necessity and wellness such as blankets and quilts. 

“One of the biggest micro-aggressions that happens to disabled people is the language we use when we are talking about them or talking with them,” Mills notes. “I like to poke fun, I like to be ridiculous – that allows people to laugh and take a beat and go, ‘OK, maybe I do need to think about the way I communicate. Laughter is the way I break down those barriers.’” 

Watch out for Mills in a curated show about textiles at the new Granville Centre Art Gallery in May following an extended artist residency there.