Review: Hot Mess Access at SUBUD Perth
Hot Mess Access at SUBUD Perth
Friday, February 13, 2026
In a white-box community hall in East Victoria Park, Hot Mess Access unfolded not as a spectacle but as a recalibration. Presented by Rogue Access, this was less a showcase and more a demonstration of what happens when access isn’t an afterthought but the architecture. The evening formed the culmination of a nine-week development program—one in which every artist involved had lived experience of disability and, crucially, was paid fairly for their work.
SUBUD Perth’s modest hall—timber floors, flexible seating, no theatrical gloss—became an intentional container. Audio description ran alongside the performances. Auslan interpretation held space in the corner. The audience was invited to move, to take breaks, to regulate. After the first act, Creative Producer Ash Morris—pink hair, Ken-coded confidence and an honest declaration of “I’m having an ADHD day”—checked in with blind patrons about sound levels. It felt radical because so few rooms operate this way, and rarer still that such care is delivered without condescension.
The title was clever—Hot Mess Access reclaims messiness as a right, not a deficit. “Hot mess” is often afforded to able bodies: chaos that can be recovered from. Here, mess became human, expansive, possible.
Jess Dening opened in a rainbow-spoked wheelchair and white dress, pinning post-it criticisms—”too much”, “lazy”, “too sensitive”—to her body before casting them off to Bowie’s Rebel Rebel. A “Please Like Me” slogan T-shirt sharpened the commentary, while a brief unzipping of a straitjacket-style overlay revealed hot pink fishnets beneath. The chair was not a limitation but an instrument; moments of standing punctuated rather than defined the choreography. The declaration “I am enough” could risk simplicity, but its delivery felt earned.
Blind performer Ruth Fernandez’s segment cut sharpest. Sparkly pink sunglasses, a silk dressing gown and her assistant “Pupil” at her side, she opened asleep at a table before launching into a barrage of eye puns—“It’s only going to get cornea,” “I’m eye-conic.” A video backdrop showed her navigating shops and footpaths, the quiet hazards of everyday infrastructure laid bare. Her game-show challenge, Eye on the Prize, destabilised the audience’s nervous politeness. In a neat twist, a blind volunteer guided a sighted participant through a puzzle while blindfolded. The laughter was collective, not cautious.
Playwright Daniel Motearefi’s staged dialogue wrestled with artistic originality and creeping paranoia. A script-obsessed protagonist spiralled over every idea already existing, Google searches feeding defeatism and suspicion. The writing lacked compression, and the central dilemma felt familiar, but its sincerity was clear—particularly in the turning point reminder that it matters less what story you tell than how you tell it. Importantly, disability was not positioned as subject matter; the struggle was artistic, existential and universal.
Toby To followed with a K-pop dance medley that pulsed with visible delight. The choreography carried recognisable idol-inspired gestures—sharp arm lines, rehearsed turns—but also moments that felt entirely his own. Precision gave way to looseness, then snapped back again. There was no rush to complete the routine, no anxiety about staying perfectly in time; the performance moved at the rhythm of his body rather than the clock. Smiles rippled across the room as he shifted between influence and invention. It was less about technical perfection than about presence, and that presence proved contagious.
The evening closed with Amy Higginbottom’s interactive installation: a mannequin layered in ableist judgements torn down by participants and scattered into confetti. The labour of reassembling the mannequin each show became its own quiet metaphor—the ongoing work of shedding and surviving imposed labels.
If polish varied across the works, the structural integrity did not. Perhaps it is no coincidence that those most often excluded have perfected the art of inclusion. Hot Mess Access did not ask for sympathy. It asked for space—and showed how to make it.
CAT LANDRO