The Art Gallery of New South Wales is staging an ambitious must-see program of
events, performances and artist commissions to celebrate Sydney WorldPride
2023.
Queer Encounters, which takes place from 17 February – 5 March 2023, brings together artworks, including new commissions, by legendary Australian LGBTQ+ artists, including Dennis Golding, Bhenji Ra, Sione Tuívailala Monū and Sidney McMahon, and provide a snapshot of some of the contemporary queer art being made in Australia today.
The incredible works put together by the incredible LGBTQ+ team at the Art Gallery of New South Wales create a ‘queer threshold’ that prompts alternative ways of looking, remembering and history-making and are situated in, and respond to, the vestibule and Kaldor Hall at the entrance to the Art Gallery of New South Wales‘ historic South Building.
Weaving through the galleries, the project acknowledges the resonance of queer histories while engaging with the past and showcasing the breadth of contemporary queer practice.
Queer Encounters artworks include:
Dennis Golding – a Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay artist specialising in contemporary, indigenous aboriginal art, recasts fragments of memories into a gold-drenched chandelier using iron lacework details from the Victorian-era balconies of his childhood homes in inner-city Redfern.
Bhenji Ra – a performance and interdisciplinary artist currently based on the stolen land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, Sydney, draws on the processes of remembering as a way to reconfigure representations and histories of marginalised bodies through dance and conversational soundscapes alongside artist and collaborator Star Amerasu.
Sione Tuívailala Monū – who works with the mediums of photography, moving image, fashion and adornment, and performance while drawing and exploring identity, family and Pasifika queer experience in the diaspora, presents spectacular apertures that weave together moving and still portraits of friends and family into real and imagined worlds of queer Moana diasporas.
Sidney McMahon – An interdisciplinary artist working across sculptural installation, video and performance who focuses on collaboration and interdisciplinary practice while exploring a personal queer narrative showcases a video installation that suspends us in a memory loop and tests the potential for the Kaldor Hall – both a waiting zone and a transitory space – to hold queer experiences of time and personal transformations.
Queer Encounters is part of WorldPride at the Art Gallery – entry is Free, and no tickets are required for the Art Gallery and most displays, exhibitions and events.
