*Stability Chair (2024)* and overGrown Chair (2024)

Contemporary culture has borne a tangled thread around neurodiversity - a superordinate term for cognitive and behavioural conditions including dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC), and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Neurodiversity involves differences to how an individual perceives and navigates education, culture, and social cues that most register as mundane.

As art mirrors culture, the artist finds themselves at the ruptured hypocenter of definition and understanding. Chaining together expressions of Autism and ADHD, artist and designer Christopher Kelly hooks their creative practice to crocheted sculptures, bestowing tangible life to what’s going on inside their neurodivergent mind.

Upholding their practice in their Princes Risborough-based studio and teaching Fashion and Textiles at University of the Arts London, Christopher was diagnosed with ADHD in 2018. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Christopher would develop long COVID, summoning a period of physical inactivity. Resisting the long-term side effects of the virus, Christopher’s neurodivergence would usher an opportunity to craft, preserve creative engagement, and better understand what it means to be neurodiverse. In 2023, Christopher received their Autism diagnosis.

The Poorly Project had the pleasure of visiting Christopher’s studio and learning more about how their neurodivergence manifests in creative practice.

Arriving at Christopher Kelly’s studio, the sunlight stretches inside to introduce an assembly of crocheted sculptural wonders. Made using garden twine, the sculptural pieces offer an admirable scale that begets raised heads studying how long each piece took to create.

A few sculptures hang against the wall. Others remain seated. The largest piece dangles from the barn’s high ceiling, its tassels grazing against the floor in creative assertion, affirming its presence and inescapable handiwork. ‘Slow art’ would be the definitive delineation of this collection of artisanship. It commands patience and a preemptive comprehension of time. And yet, Christopher’s early reaction to their ADHD diagnosis differed.

“My initial response was to run for the hills. I had never heard of ADHD. I went for a dyslexia diagnosis, came out with an ADHD diagnosis, and felt incredibly overwhelmed. I spent a year avoiding the concept that I might have ADHD…”

“...I went through a process of seeking therapy, leaning into the potential of ADHD. Then the research started, and my better understanding began.”

Christopher handling one of their crocheted sculptures

Christopher’s growing familiarity with ADHD would be aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic and its long-term symptoms. Bedbound, Christopher would find crochet the ultimate companion - an aidful medium for their hyperactivity. With fingers caught in the fervid need for stimulation, the growing number of works and their proportions would begin to exceed the confines of the bedroom, gradually finding repose within the studio.

In establishing the analogies between Autism and ADHD, Christopher assigns ADHD to dopamine chasing and outrunning oneself, whilst its adversary, Autism, demands order. The embrace of textiles to construct intricate and meditative forms would allow Christopher to find a modicum of harmony between these domineering internal elements.

“The only word I've come close to is ‘conflict’. It's just the perfect word because two opposing forces are trying to coexist.”

The studio exhibition offers a framework into Christopher’s processing of their neurodivergence, the works collectively known as Interwoven. Within the Interwoven project exist chapters forming remarkable insights into the nuances, satisfactions, and complexities discovered by Christopher from the points of diagnosis.

The first chapter ‘Masking’ is the sculptural manifestation of Christopher’s efforts to repress autism-related needs as a means of adapting to social norms and demands. However, the commitment to masking poses ramifications such as burnout, fatigue, and substance use. For Christopher - masking urges momentariness.

Development wall for the next *Interwoven* chapter - Working title ‘*Shedding’*

The pieces within ‘Masking’ exist solitarily. Revelatory to the neurodiverse condition of being sidelined, the collection internalises the anomalous self against the pervading neurotypical ruling one succumbs to for survival. Whilst Christopher works to lessen these moments, masking remains a long-standing act, further incentivised in the cautious progression of their artistic career.

“All my work is laced with this idea of masking. The removal, embodiment, and the fragility of these masks,” explains Christopher.

“I relate my unmasking similarly to coming out and navigating internalised homophobia. I'm now realising that I have internalised ableism. I think it takes the neurotypical community, which is the majority, longer to accept and digest. And it's always been this way, right? The smaller groups are the ones that get victimised, targeted, or penalised for being different.”

“When you start owning and celebrating yourself, you're going to get more ‘shade’. You are confidently being yourself, and that goes against the grain.”

The sequel to ‘Masking’ is ‘Dis/Functional’, where we begin to see Christopher’s hyperactivity unfold with unfettered sculptural proportions and material resourcefulness. Using discarded objects found in a dysfunctional state, Christopher couples these articles with crochet, masterfully repurposing and celebrating their dysfunctionality.

Chairs appear to be the predominant item abandoned and misused. Needed and offered to many, but left in an unusable state; the item serves as an abstraction of the neurodiverse narrative - disseminated but remaining disrupted or neglected. Christopher’s reception of these items as ‘fragile beauty’ makes way for neurodiversity to be registered as something that empowers a dynamic exchange between neurodivergent and neurotypical individuals.

Sat beside the largest piece, Dis/Functional No.1, Christopher retraces the autobiographical elements to their fascination with found objects:

“From a young age, I've been attracted to the anomaly, the unique, the broken, or the outsider. I was always drawn to the single teacup that had no set. And if they sit in a slight dysfunction, it's even more appealing.”

“There’s that connection to my experience - you're directly sitting in the ‘other’ pile. Growing from a kid to a teenager to an adult, you realise you can celebrate that unique quality. Now, I'm at a point of trying to connect the dots between all of those parts of my identity and celebrate them as a whole.”

Remaining seated in the exploration of chairs and functionality, Christopher would collaborate with Bristol-based designer and maker Daniel Hayden on ‘overGrown’. Joining forces with Daniel’s characterful woodworked furniture that offers playfulness in form, the collaboration would seek to push the boundaries of craft, disrupt tradition and subvert our common registry of ‘unquestionable functions’ in idiosyncratic ways.

Precarious boulders, downstream dispersions, and sensuous ripples - the influences of nature are distinguishable, and a tactile approach offers deeper reverence for the collection. Smooth surfaces typically intended to rest one’s back upon are suspended by Christopher’s crocheted masses, bearing a resemblance to moss clusters, wisteria, and weeping willow.

*The Aerated Stool (2024)* and *Holding Chair (2024)*

The Aerated Stool possesses a hermit-crab quality, emblematic of the urgency to mask in certain social situations where a mask cannot be found. Christopher elaborates on the conceptual design behind the piece:

“I value these conversations because you're giving me the luxury to verbally process my work. The Aerated Stool is a somewhat hybrid piece - shedding, camouflage, protection, fragility…”

“…The octopus that camouflages by grabbing hundreds of shells from around itself and disappears into the environment - that was the vision for the Aerated Stool. A collection of broken, forgotten baskets, all clambered together and creating a form of protection. And within it, you see it's unbalanced. It doesn't quite hold together”.

Christopher’s material experiments using egg shells as a form of masking/camouflage

As Christopher secures a stronger understanding of their neurodivergence, finalised pieces are approached with liberating detachment. A relationship resembling that of natal dispersal, Christopher’s ADHD pushes creations outside of the maker’s nest and into exhibitory spaces. It gives each piece the chance to ‘stand on its own two legs and let it become a source of something for someone else’. For Christopher, it is an opportunity to enter the next developmental stage of their practice.

Achievement can be steeped as an artist, and Christopher admits that accessing these exhibitory spaces and adjacent opportunities means embracing a forceful squeeze, tightened by their neurodivergence. With the ambition of offering greater advocacy and inclusivity, Christopher hopes to initiate ‘Neuroverse’ - an online resource hub supporting neurodiverse artists through community activations, content, practical support, and mentorship programmes. These efforts will be designed to break down barriers and foster a more equitable arts sector. Aiming to launch next year, Christopher has begun to establish a team with other neurodiverse practitioners, furthering their discoveries with each conversation.

“We're discovering what we need, what we are, and how our brains work. And they have started to realise that they have spent their whole life denying their instinct. And I have done the same. I have an instinctive response to people, environments, energies, and ideas - for a long time, I parked those instincts because the neurotypical world tells you not to do that. It tells you to base it on facts and presentable evidence.”

“I believe there is power in every individual having a voice, no matter what your practice or what your being is. As a disenfranchised voice, I believe the confidence I've gained through therapy, research, learning, and understanding is that the more authentic I am to myself, the happier and healthier I am. The way I understand myself and my position in the world is through creating. So the more I create effectively, the more of a voice for my neurodiversity.”

Together with their practice and Neuroverse, Christopher encourages “a more conscious, honest conversation”.

“As I just expressed that feeling of burnout that I will experience, the fact that we're talking about that feeling will lessen it. The point is exposure and communication.”

“I think for the naysayers, it will start being normalised. It will start being an easy conversation, and those retorts of this being a trend will become quiet. The more you search around, there's visibility, and it just takes time.”

You can learn more about Christopher on Instagram and their official site.

All Images Courtesy of The Poorly Project

Christopher Kelly

sarah davis