Arts Project Australia
Arts Project Australia Inc. is a registered charity and non-profit organisation located in Northcote, an inner northern area of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The organisation provides facilitation/mentoring, studio and exhibition spaces for artists with intellectual disabilities, and as such has been identified as a major centre for the promotion and exhibition of outsider art, or art that has been produced outside of the contemporary and historical mainstream. In 2016 there were approximately 130 artists attending the studio, with the work of exhibiting artists featuring alongside works from the broader contemporary art community in the annual rotating exhibition program. History Arts Project was founded in 1974 by Myra Hilgendorf OAM and was the first full-time not-for-profit art studio in Australia for artists with intellectual disabilities. Hilgendorf sought to provide the opportunity for artists with intellectual disabilities to access the same resources, materials and opportunities to exhibit, as non-disabled artists. The seminal exhibition Minus/Plus was launched in 1975, the title working as a counter response to the negative implications of a series of articles printed in The Age newspaper, entitled ‘The Minus Children.’ This was followed in 1980 by the exhibition Tommy's World, which opened at the Australian National Gallery in Canberra. In