In Warrnambool, in south-west Victoria, there is a vanguard disability movement growing, charged by a grassroots group called the Find Your Voice Collective.
Most recently, they've produced a striking set of photographic portraits that topple preconceived notions of disability.
The exhibition, Alter Ego, asks, "Who would you be, if you could be anyone? And how do you wish the world would see you?"
Grace Kenny as Greatness Known. (Supplied: Find Your Voice Collective: Maja Pearson)
Artists in the group say the images present a potential future, an inclusive world where power, beauty, fame and career success are commonplace experiences for people who identify with a disability.
The artists are part of a larger group called the Find Your Voice Collective, a grassroots disability juggernaut that began as an all-abilities choir in 2018.
The choir has evolved to become the collective, something close to a political movement.
It advocates for the human rights of people with a disability, using art and music as a powerful form of creative activism.
At just 20 years old, Grace Kenny (GK) has become a lead singer in the group, writing and performing her own hip hop music in front of festival crowds, backed by the choir.
Grace Kenny writes and performs her own hip hop music. (Supplied: Find Your Voice Collective)
Kenny says her alter ego, Greatness Known, is an expansion of her current life and career path: the manifestation of her dream to take the world by storm.
"The whole Alter Ego series is made out of who we really see ourself as, like it really goes down to the depths of our identity and the way we want to be seen," Kenny says.
"We're not the disability, I'm not just another person with Down Syndrome, I can be Grace Kenny, I can be GK, I can be Greatness Known, I can be anyone I want to be when I dress up in my alter ego."
Grace Kenny as her alter ego Greatness Known (GK). (Supplied: Find Your Voice Collective: Maja Pearson)
Kenny says her alter-ego portrait is a call for the world to see her potential.
"I just really want to be in a world where I'm a singer, taking on the world and I'm touring and people can see who I really am as a person," she says.
Empowered by costumes
Find Your Voice Collective theatre facilitator Megan Twycross says the exhibition is both a proclamation and an invitation.
"I think part of the program is asking other people to experience an alter ego too," she says.
Megan Twycross with Grace Kenny and Tom Leembruggen. ( ABC News: Emily Bissland )
Twycross has her own portrait in the exhibition, along with a few other artists who also do not have disabilities.
"We want to demonstrate that anyone can do this and the bravery of what we are doing is hopefully encouraging others," Twycross says.
"We were trying to think about preconceived ideas, and perhaps blowing those out of the water."
As an example, Twycross describes a portrait of artist Melissa Johnson depicted as her alter ego Mizz Wynter Vizion.
"It kind of emulates Girl with the Pearl Earring meets Queen Victoria," she says.
Melissa Johnson as her alter ego, Mizz Wynter Vizion. (Supplied: Find Your Voice Collective: Maja Pearson)
In the image, Johnson depicts herself as royalty, an object of power and beauty, someone who commands attention.
"Everyone has the right to feel beautiful, and to use costume and fashion to feel empowered and to feel beautiful," Twycross says.
"It's a human right to feel that at some point, don't you think? To feel gorgeous."
Over the months leading up to the exhibition, artists were mentored by costume and performance art specialists like Warrnambool-born Dandrogyny.
Under Twycross's guidance, artists directed their own photographic portraits, inhabiting a self-assigned alter-ego, developing backstories and catchphrases, and collaborating on costume design.
Johnson's disability limits her capacity to talk, but she can write and communicate via smart devices.
Johnson worked with costumers Janet Punch from Warrnambool Theatre Company, and Yvonne Lefebvre, a Brauer College textiles teacher, to communicate her wintry vision, steeped in old-fashioned glamour and grace.
Melissa Johnson in her everyday clothes. (Supplied: Find Your Voice Collective: Maja Pearson)
"We sat down together and said, 'Alright, so this is your character. How do you see them?'" Twycross says.
"When the artists stood in front of the camera, they stood as their character and they'd already worked out the movements and the facial expressions and the voice."
'Transformative and magical'
Taking part in the photographic project was transformative for many of the artists involved.
Tom Leembruggan works at a recycled goods shed in Warrnambool, Are-Able Big R Shed, and has cerebral palsy.
Tom Leembruggen in plain clothes. (Supplied: Find Your Voice Collective)
His alter ego is a dark magician and escape artist, Mr Bang Bang Surprise.
"Mr Bang Bang Surprise is a really powerful, dark magician and he also likes chai lattes," Leembruggan says.
Tom Leembruggen says his disability disappeared when he became Mr Bang Bang Surprise. (Supplied: Find Your Voice Collective: Maja Pearson)
"I like doing magic and I like escaping out of the coolest things.
"I want to be doing my own show with a lot of magic and surprise."
Leembruggan says he found the day of the photo shoot taxing, but also transformative and magical.
"It was really busy and really hard to do. There was a lot of getting ready and getting all your costumes and makeup on.
"When you see yourself in the mirror, you see you've got a different power in yourself. And your disability is gone, as well.
"Looking in the mirror was magical."
Backed by a choir
Since 2018, The Find Your Voice Choir has now expanded to about 250 members from more than 16 regional south-west Victorian communities.
The choir has collaborated with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, The Wiggles, Mama Kin Spender and Electric Umbrella (UK).
It performs regularly at events including Port Fairy Spring Music Festival and the Port Fairy Folk Festival, sharing the stage with headline acts such as The Waifs and Eric Bibb.
Tom Richardson flanked by The Waifs at Port Fairy Folk Festival this year. (Supplied: Find Your Voice Collective: Kirsty Hill)
Singer-songwriter Tom Richardson co-founded the choir with Kylie Thulborn, a lifelong disability ally and the mother of Harves McCorkell, who is a multimedia producer and choir member, and part of the Alter Ego exhibition.
Harves McCorkell as Dirty Paws for the Alter Ego portrait exhibition. (Supplied: Find Your Voice Collective: Maja Pearson)
Richardson said that the idea for Alter Ego came from themes exploring identity.
"How you're perceived and how you want to be perceived, and in an ideal world, what that would look like," he says.
For Richardson, this exhibition, like everything their collective does, is a form of disability-led activism.
"Our aspiration as a collective is to be disability-led. So every idea starts or comes from our artists who identify with disability.
"Anything that we put out into the world, there is absolutely this sense of underlying creative activism.
Kylie Thulborn and Tom Richardson with The Wiggles. (Supplied: Find Your Voice Collective: Rodney Harris)
Dean Saunders' love for Mrs Doubtfire inspired his alter ego, Mrs Custard Tart. (Supplied: Find Your Voice Collective: Maja Pearson)
"The stories are told by the people who are living those stories, and they're told in a way that … doesn't play into a feel good, or a lesser-than model."
Richardson says the collective is striving for an inclusive reality that doesn't yet exist, but is within the realm of possibility.
"Sometimes, where I think the world is, is further advanced than what it actually is," he says.
"Everything that we do at Find Your Voice, I hope can be a real-life, living example of how the world should be, could be, as guided by the lived experience of disability."
The Alter Ego photography exhibition launches on Friday, November 17 for one weekend, with live performances by Grace Kenny and DJ Cooper Smith at The Space in Warrnambool.
Source: ABC