Alison Lapper, British artist, born in 1965 without arms and shortened legs, the result of a medical condition called phocomelia. The first 19 years of her life were spent in residential institutions for people with impairments and the story of those years and her subsequent success as an artist and public figure can be found in her autobiography, My Life in My Hands. Alison sprung to fame when Marc Quinn's statue of her naked and pregnant went on display in Trafalgar Square, and in 2003 she won a Woman of the Year award in Spain and received the MBE in Britain for services to art.
Alison finally left her institution to go to University where she started to enjoy life and graduated with a First Class Honours degree in 1994. She has since exhibited work in group shows and solo exhibitions, which have been well documented by the media.
Her work uses a variety of media including painting, photography, digital imaging and installation to explore her subject, which is often herself and the ways in which she is viewed by others. It questions notions of physical normality and beauty, in a society that considers her to be deformed because she was born without arms. Her particular influence has been the Venus de Milo, a great classic beauty, who lost her arms. Alison's final year degree show installation included photographs of herself as a child wearing artificial limbs and concluded in a self-portrait, posed as the Venus de Milo. This became one her best known works and was re-exhibited at London's Photographer's Gallery in a Millennium Exhibition.The documentary Alison's Baby, about her life since Parys was born, has been shown worldwide and won the Prix Italia and Prix Leonardo.
Alison teaches for the Mouth and Foot Painter's Association and various art colleges and student bodies. She appeared in BBC 1's Child of Our Time series presented by Robert Winston, and is currently preparing work for my next exhibition in her new studio in Sussex.Outsiders was contributing to the same conference as Alison this year. We were inspired by her talk, and decided to give her the 2006 Outsiders Award to show our appreciation and offer thanks from other disabled people.
