UQ Art Museum has partnered with the artist-led program Access Lab and Library to offer a free online reading group to help arts workers think in new and experimental ways about ‘access’.
And best of all? Everyone is welcome to join: the sessions are suitable for interested parties from a broad range of roles, art forms and institutions.
Access Lab & Library was created in 2023 by co-founders Fayen d’Evie and Jon Tjhia to develop and nurture disability-led and artist-led access in creative settings. The tools and strategies they employ are suited to live performance, exhibitions and publishing.
Tjhia and d’Evie approach ‘access’, they say, as ‘a temporary, collectively-held space, as an experimental field, and as a platform for generosity’.
The a reading group with UQ Art Museum takes place across three Wednesdays – 20 May, 3 June and 17 June. Registrations are open now and reading materials will be distributed to participants on 20 April, a month ahead of the first session.
While the reading group’s title may sound slightly academic – Against the Protocols of the Civilised Body: Online Reading Group with Access Lab & Library – the atmosphere is guaranteed to be warm and welcoming.
‘Most simply, we’re both artists who are interested in letting people show up as themselves,’ d’Evie says. ‘In these sessions, we prefer a conversational and informal tone and, where possible, simpler framings of concepts that might allow more people to participate in the discussion.
‘But we’re also comfortable with more scholarly debates – we just don’t come from a position of one approach being more valuable than the other. Whatever your preference, our role as co-founders is to help join the space between the people who show up.’
Tjhia adds: ‘In the context of the group, “reading” is more of a loose umbrella term. With lives that intersect with publishing in various ways, we each love to read, and we consider the concept of “publication” very relevant to thinking about intersensory access in particular.
‘The texts and examples we look at together as a group give us a lot to discuss and consider, and often stir us to imagine expansive possibilities for creative access.’
The pair initially formed a reading group for themselves, they say, out of a commitment to learning from others and making this a central habit of their work, with the goal of trying to learn about how other people have approached – and critiqued – their own works and projects.
‘While we enjoy exploring new ways of approaching access, we’re also greatly indebted to disabled artists, writers and thinkers who’ve shared their practices, methods and tactics, and their dreams of work that goes beyond,’ d’Evie says. ‘That is, artists whose foremost concern is art; though their work may be infused with access.
‘The energy the two of us have been able to devote to reading together has varied a lot and, similar to cooking, it’s easier to commit to the ritual when you’re expecting others,’ Tjhia says.
UQ Art Museum: who is this group for?
If you’re wondering who exactly would benefit from the reading group and the many discussions it’s sure to inspire, the answer, the pair emphasise, may well be: you!
‘We welcome anyone interested in the arts and experimental ways of thinking about access, including artists, arts workers, and really anyone who believes art has some kind of transformative role to play in their lives,’ d’Evie says.
‘And we’re definitely thinking about the arts very broadly: visual artists, filmmakers, writers, sound artists and radiomakers, musicians, performance and live artists, multimedia designers and anyone working within and between artistic forms.
‘We especially encourage disabled people to attend. When spaces are built around disabled knowledges and understandings of the world, they are often already altered in important ways, and we greatly value the analysis, expertise and leadership that disabled people bring to these discussions.’
‘We don’t come with rigid expectations,’ Tjhia adds. ‘We won’t assume any prior knowledge. There are no right answers, or perhaps more accurately, no permanent or universal ones. We’re asking: what does access mean for your life, community, capacity and times.’
The reading group, in other words, will be defined by the group itself, while led by Tjhia and d’Evie.
‘Collective discussions like reading groups are the kinds of situations where we define and redefine our approach to access,’ d’Evie says. ‘The more we study, the better we can thoughtfully extend the encounters people have with access.’
The free upcoming Access Lab and Library Reading Group at UQ Art Museum takes place online on 20 May, 3 June and 17 June 2026. Visit the dedicated UQ Art Museum event page to find out more.
