The time of her life: how Nnena Kalu turned Patrick Swayze videos into art

Humber Street Gallery in Hull was a blank slate two days ago, but by the time I arrive the ground-floor space is already half full with newly made sculptures. Nnena Kalu works fast and she works big. The artist repurposes waste material like old VHS tape, and as I watch her in action, she unspools it in long, satisfying reams to garnish her boldly expressive sculptures. A massive stockpile of raw material sits at one end of the gallery, from videotapes to assorted coloured adhesive tapes, and piles of fabric, like puzzle pieces waiting Kalu to fit them together and make sense of them.

She paces across the gallery at regular intervals to dive into this trove, beginning a process that repeats its basic steps yet produces something new each time. A pre-made group of boulder-like forms are bound together, and then attached to an ingenious system of adjustable frame-like structures, where they’re wrapped and bound further, to create messy forms that seem to bristle with energy.

For Kalu, this is a rare opportunity to exhibit in a dedicated contemporary art gallery. She’s on the autism spectrum and has complex support needs. She’s able to work as an artist with the help of ActionSpace, a London-based organisation aiding artists with learning disabilities. Kalu gets direct support from Charlotte Hollinshead, whose role functions as something like a more specialised artist’s assistant. Kalu is unable to articulate complex thoughts verbally, so Hollinshead speaks on her behalf.

Over the 20 years that they have worked together, Hollinshead has used a trial and error approach to introduce new elements and find the best way for Kalu to work, and the introduction of VHS tape was a big success. Hollinshead clearly plays a significant part in Kalu’s work, but she’s keen to stress how Kalu is driving the creative process, decisively rejecting or accepting new elements that are introduced to the process, bending them to her interests to produce often surprising results. As Hollinshead puts it: “She’s not just blindly unravelling tape, she’s making careful decisions. The more time and space she has, the more it becomes apparent.”

Kalu’s rapid pace makes it a challenge to gather materials, with VHS tape in particular becoming difficult to source. Hollinshead is now almost constantly on the hunt for it, gladly accepting donations from wherever she can secure them. Sometimes this produces interesting results, such as a recent project in Belgium where Kalu worked almost exclusively with tapes of Patrick Swayze films.

Last year’s Glasgow International was a breakthrough moment for Kalu, situating her among one of the UK’s most exciting contemporary art events and exposing her work to the mass of artists and industry professionals who descend on the city for the festival. That industry recognition was vital for ActionSpace, who are part of a nationwide group of organisations – such as Glasgow’s Project Ability, where Kalu exhibited – pushing for greater inclusion for learning disabled artists. It was in Glasgow that John Heffernan, curator of Humber Street, saw Kalu’s work, offering her a show in Hull off the back of it.

“People are constantly sidelined into outsider art or educational activity,” Hollinshead says. It’s this attitude that disabled artists are often working against. Education and advocacy around disability are vitally important, but often these roles are imposed on artists by industry gatekeepers, preventing their art being appreciated simply on its merits. This was why Humber Street was the ideal venue, with Hollinshead mentioning that they “have been perfect in providing an open platform with no agenda”.

The gallery, which sits in a former banana ripening factory at the heart of Hull’s recently redeveloped Fruit Market cultural quarter, relaunched its programme earlier this year, aiming to build on the success of the UK’s tenure of the City of Culture by developing artist talent for the long term. Kalu’s exhibition is part of this new model.

As with many learning disabled artists, Kalu’s compulsive behaviour forms a starting point for her work. This can be seen through her repetition, her need to bind and layer materials over and over again, until in this case, the resulting objects fill a room. Through working with ActionSpace, Kalu has been able to “tap into that compulsion and turn it into a positive, creative force”, in the words of Hollinshead.

However, while compulsive behaviour is more readily apparent in the work of learning disabled artists, it may be a slightly misleading discussion. Ultimately, all art making is a sort of compulsive behaviour. Unless you’re at the absolute top of your field, there’s little material benefit from being an artist, but those who are, do so because they feel like they need to. Perhaps this line of thinking is key to rejecting easy labels and reconsidering how the industry can respond to artists like Kalu. As ActionSpace co-director Sheryll Catto puts it: “Our artists are artists and they exist in whatever the contemporary canon is.”

• Nnena Kalu: Wrapping is at Humber Street Gallery, Hull, until 8 December.