Grace's remarkable fight back after she was hit by a car
Shropshire artist Grace Currie, who tells the story of living with a head injury through her work, has finally been able to celebrate her university graduation.
The 29-year-old was unable to celebrate the First Class Honours degree that she gained two years ago before the pandemic.
It is 12 years after the accident which left Grace with catastrophic injuries.
She is marking the achievement with a new exhibition in Shrewsbury throughout May.
In October 2010, Grace, aged 27, was crossing the road in Baschurch when she was hit by a car, suffering a catastrophic brain.
Her parents, Graeme and Lorraine spent six weeks not knowing whether their teenage daughter would survive.
It took almost two months for her to breathe unaided and 12 months before she could return home. She wasn’t walking, speaking or able to do anything for herself at that point.
Her determination and humour helped her to fight back and with the help of a carer, live independently.
Her studies at the University of Chester saw her explore her life and her feelings about how she and her brain injury is perceived.
Her latest exhibiton, Almost Happy, will be held at The Hive in Belmont Shrewsbury from May 6 to May 30.
With both ceramic pieces and paintings, Grace said: "I wanted to reflect the fleeting nature of happiness and ‘feeling normal’ and look at my experiences of the Mental Health Act.
Her work, including powerful large-scale paintings and colourful self-portraits have been described as expressing an anarchic, sometimes dark, or humorous vision.
The exhibition opens with a performance of Put Away Neatly - for more details search on the Eventbrite website.
"It will exploring repeated words and phrases that can be uttered by the people who have our best interests at heart, but which often have the culminative impact of keeping us safe, tidy, and silent," she said.
Her work has been supported and mentored by the national WAIWAV project, We Are Invisible We Are Visible, and Disability Arts Shropshire (DASH) as part of its prestigious Ampersand Award 2021.
The performance piece will be repeated at Manchester's HOME Gallery on July 2022 at 12.30pm.
