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Bruno Booth
Dead Ends and Detours

Bruno Booth – Dead Ends and Detours

Dead Ends and Detours by Walyalup (Fremantle)-based artist Bruno Booth puts the audience in a wheelchair and demonstrates that disability is not a dirty word. Playful and subversive, this interactive outdoor installation invites passers-by to compete in an obstacle course in the Perth Cultural Centre. Using a wheelchair, race against the clock and the system in a game of will.

Mixing sculpture and installation, sport, urban design, and disability aesthetics, with cultural references ranging from the Paralympics and Speedway to Evel Knievel, this subversive work offers a direct insight into the lived experience of physical disability. Inspired by the navigational challenges artist Bruno Booth faces as a wheelchair user, this work recasts disability as a skill set to be celebrated within an empathetic and empowering game.

Commissioned by PICA and Next Wave and supported by PICA’s Art Commissioners and the WA Government through the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries and its Theatre Development Initiative. 

Recommended age: 8+ years
Duration: 5–10 minutes to complete the obstacle course

Dead Ends and Detours Sessions

The installation is free and open for visitors to navigate the course in a provided wheelchair.

Friday 17 March
Active installation: 10am–5pm

Saturday 18 March
Active installation: 10am–5pm

Sunday 19 March
Active installation: 10am–5pm

Limited Edition Dead Ends T-shirts

Purchase onsite now. Call (08) 9228 6300 or email info@pica.org.au for more details.

$50
Black and Red – Front
S–XL
Purchase in store
$50
Black and Pink – Front
S–XL
Purchase in store
$50
Cream and Red – Front
S–XL
Purchase in store
$50
Blue and Pink – Front
S–XL
Purchase in store
$50
Black and Red – Back
S–XL
Purchase in store
$50
Black and Pink – Back
S–XL
Purchase in store
$50
Cream and Red – Back
S–XL
Purchase in store
$50
Blue and Pink – Back
S–XL
Purchase in store

About the Artist

Bruno Booth has used a wheelchair for most of his life, interrupted by a short and unsuccessful career as an amateur stilt walker when he used prosthetic legs as a child. In his memory these leather and metal devices would not have been out of place on the set of some dystopian, apocalyptic epic – not in a cool and attractive Fury Road sort of way, more like the zombies in the original Walking Dead. The experience of wearing restrictive equipment left him with a dislike of tight-fitting clothing, a love of speed and a need to reach over his head in supermarkets – as a child he made the decision to use a wheelchair as his primary mode of transport – and he’s never looked back (probably because he’s too busy looking out for sand pits on dark footpaths).    

Having a disability has been a constant background hum throughout Booth’s life. Kind of like a social tinnitus – you know it’s there, but you try not to talk about it. It was only when he started to call himself an artist, without cringing too much, that he began to engage critically with what it meant to be categorised as disabled. 

Supporters

Dead Ends and Detours is commissioned by PICA and Next Wave and has been supported by the WA Government through the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries and its Theatre Development Initiative and PICA’s Art Commissioners.

Image: Bruno Booth, photo: Duncan Wright

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