Curator: Celina Loh
Museum of the Home exhibition: Co-curated by Celina Loh and Lara Baclig
Production and access: In Transit
Funded by Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant
An evolving project by Alison Lam exploring overwhelm, neurodivergent experience and the spaces between calm and chaos. The project began in Manchester before travelling to Westminster Reference Library and Museum of the Home in London, with each presentation adapting to its context.
Mind the Gap grew from workshops artist Alison Lam led with neurodivergent people across the UK, exploring different experiences of overwhelm through conversations, drawings and visual scores. Together, participants explored overwhelm as more than a difficult or negative experience, considering its connections to growth and possibility.
Alison brought these collective conversations into dialogue with her own experiences as a neurodivergent artist and mother of two autistic sons. The resulting exhibition combined moving image, sound, installation, drawing and participatory elements to invite audiences to encounter and reflect on different experiences of overwhelm.
We initially planned to tour the exhibition from SEESAW in Manchester to Westminster Reference Library in London. Following the two exhibitions, the Museum of the Home invited us to present the project there too. Each venue gave us an opportunity to reconsider how the work could respond to a different space, context and audience.
Alison first approached In Transit for help finding a venue in Manchester and organising the workshops. As the project developed, Celina Loh worked closely with Alison to shape an exhibition narrative from the material participants had contributed.
Together, they revisited the conversations, drawings and visual scores, identifying connections between participants’ experiences and Alison’s wider artistic practice. These discussions informed the selection and development of works, bringing existing pieces into dialogue with new work responding to the workshops.
This included portraits of Alison’s autistic sons, which question expectations of what autism looks like and who gets to define it, and Beautifully Discarded, which explores how we assign value to things perceived as flawed or out of place. Their conversations also encouraged Alison to explore her own experiences of overwhelm and masking more explicitly, bringing her perspective as an artist and mother into closer dialogue with the collective material.
At SEESAW, we structured the exhibition as a journey from immersion to rest and reflection. An audiovisual installation led into a quieter space where suspended fabrics carried visual scores, drawings and conversations from the workshops. Visitors could contribute their own experiences, while the final area brought Alison’s existing work into dialogue with new pieces responding to the collective material.
Rather than recreate SEESAW’s immersive installation, we rethought how it could work within the library’s quieter setting. A contained structure with small openings allowed visitors to view the film and listen through headphones, inviting them to look into another person’s internal world rather than be placed directly inside it.
At Museum of the Home, we explored the relationship between overwhelm and the transition between home and the outside world. Alison often began workshops by asking, “How was your journey here today?” We used this question to consider how the museum’s rooms, corridors and garden could connect the work with the energy involved in moving between private and public space. The presentation was co-curated by Celina Loh and Lara Baclig.
In Transit supported the production process with visual guides, clear timelines and flexible planning. We built in regular breaks, allowed schedules to change and made space for people to communicate their needs.
We also made time to eat together and look after one another throughout the process. These everyday practices helped us build a more supportive working environment, recognising that access involves not only the practical conditions for participation but also how people feel within a collaboration.
For a project centred on overwhelm, how we worked together mattered as much as what we produced.
Lead Artist: Alison Lam
Curator: Celina Loh
Illustrator: Wilson So
Film Director: Michael Mui
Videographer: Matt Tam
Colourist: Anson Cheng
Sound Director: Moollon Kyen
Sound: Daniel Mailer
PA / Marketing: Cara Li
Performance Artist: Bettina Fung
Access Support: … Kruse
BTS: Andy Green. William Lam
Special thanks to: Studio KIND, The Care Lab, Venture Arts, eseacontemporary, Cosmos Club & All for One Club, Markfield, The Autism Hub, Camden Disability Youth Group & Fresh Youth, The Neurodiverse Family Support Network, Hackney Ark and Museum of the Home.