Sinead O'Donnell performance artist

"Are you out yet?" Artist Sinead O'Donnell was recently asked. Nothing to do with her sexuality, but her dyslexia. Being "out" in this context meant outing an invisible disability. 

Today the 32 year old Dublin born performance artist, who only found out about her dyslexia in 2004, received an award of £70,000 for a major new artwork - CAUTION - which will explore invisibility. It's one of 13 new commissions for Unlimited, a ground breaking programme for the Cultural Olympiad that celebrates arts and culture by disabled and deaf artists.

Sinead, who has been based in Belfast since 1995, is a graduate of the University of Ulster where she studied sculpture. Her work today is performance based. The piece she's working on involves her stacking up dinner plates to her height, around 170 she told me, and then putting on an extra 30/40 until they wobble and come crashing down.

She came into studio earlier with a Japanese performance artist, Shiro Masuyama. He apologised for his lack of English and spoke haltingly, but passionately, about Sinead and her work. He is one of five international artists collaborating with her on CAUTION.He has ADD, another invisible disability.

Applications for the third and final round of commissions are now open from disabled and Deaf artists or disability arts groups. Check out unlimited.

CAUTION is due to be shown in 2012 in the gt gallery in Belfast.