DEEP END

Amy Claire Mills

7 February - 12 April 2026
Exhibition Opening: Friday 6 February 2026, 6pm
Artist Talk: Saturday 7 February, 2.30pm

Deep End is an immersive sensory installation that invites exploration through touch, sight, and sound. The project explores the concept of accessible and adaptive ‘third spaces’. Third spaces, beyond home and work, are informal social environments that foster community and connection (Oldenburg, 1989). However, for many Disabled people, third spaces often default to medical environments like doctors' waiting rooms and outpatient clinics. Public pools have long served as adaptive third spaces existing somewhere between the social and the medical. Deep End invites you to wade into a future in which care, access, and disability culture are embedded in the design from the very beginning.

Deep End is presented at Canberra Contemporary as a re-staging of the installation originally commissioned for the 13th Liverpool Biennial 2025 (BEDROCK) at Bluecoat, Liverpool, UK. 

Catalogue essay and audio version of the text by Juliet Phraser.

Image: Amy Claire Mills, ‘Deep End’, 2025. Liverpool Biennial 2025 at Bluecoat. Photographer: Mark McNulty