Artists: SF Arresta (Susan Forrester), Tama tk Favell, Bumpsonator, Dr Digit, Nurse Narcotics, Code Blue, Life Support 2.0, Hillary Green, Peter Waples-Crowe, Jacob Tolo, Renuka Rajiv, Gonzalo Ceballos, Savina Hopkins
Blak Dot presents it’s annual GLBTQI exhibition which this year celebrates and explores the theme of the skin in which we live. In the spirit of true exploration though, what better way to examine the theme than with someone else? This group show enlists artists from various cultural backgrounds and creative practices to examine and imagine the theme. This is multi disciplinary show that will examine our inner and outer identities in a social and cultural context.
Schmoozing in White Rooms
Live performance
Sound artist SF Arresta (Susan Forrester), visual artist Artist Tama tk Favell and Slam Poet Bumpsonator come together for Blak Dot and Midsumma in a visceral aural visual mind fuk.
Aggressively manipulated sounds – formidable industrial beats – flood the gallery space, seep into your veins, mess with your brain.
Larger than life images from the transgender underworld “Patiki/Flounder” burn out your eye sockets.
Belligerent vocal stabs about the art world might make you cry – so watch out art gobblers….
Trans: future operations
Bodyswap: I’ll give you mine if you give me yours
Collaboration between Dr Digit, Nurse Narcotics, Code Blue, Life Support 2.0 and special guests Barbra and Kenneth (who received free surgery in our exclusive operating suites).
In the past we were forced to be comfortable with the bodies were born with. Ugly was ugly and beautiful was beautiful, it all depended on the roll of the genetic dice. In 2014, this is no longer the case; we have the technology to reinvent ourselves to become whatever we choose. What was confined purely to the realms of science fiction, is now a reality. Now that we are no longer constrained to any particular gender, shape, size or stereotype, it is up to us to re-imagine our new look and our new role within society. We can be whatever gender we choose and we can marry the opposite sex, the same sex or anything we fancy from the animal kingdom. The limitations of the past are rapidly disappearing. Bodyswap explores the socio-cultural implications of the limitless possibilities afforded by creative surgery. Traditional plastic surgery is a thing of the past; now we’re dealing with our wildest imaginings. Ugly is the new beautiful. Trash is treasure. A bloody mess on the operating room floor is someone’s wet dream.
Black by Popular Demand
Hillary Green
In this series of work I take to centre stage, performing as both author and subject. After several years of collaborating with circus, drag performers, and the various forms which most lend themselves to hyperreal or exaggerated versions of self representation I began to wonder if and where the performance ends and the “real” person starts. Turning the camera upon myself I question, how can one ever know the “real” person when our self concepts, our self representations and corporealities are in a constant state of construction? How too can I ever be certain that I know myselves?
Over the rainbow
Peter Waples-Crowe / Jacob Tolo
At the surface of this work is the significance of blood in determining a person. The isolation and categorising of DNA. Fraught with as many dangers as benefits, we enter moral and ethical minefields surrounding selective reproduction. Where, what make us unique may be deleted without any considerations.
In particular, both artists reflect on the role of science pertaining to the GLBTIQ community. The individual ‘biological’ samples making up a community that is rich with diversity and social complexities. Ideas of the ‘gay’ gene or medical interventions on the interest. Gender diversity and transitioning, IVF, disease risk groups are just some of the things that we as a larger community should be aware of.
The work also comments on the authenticity of indigenous members of the community. Whether internal or external, ideas surrounding a persons identity still charted using colonial/anthropological constructs of ethnicity. Terms such as half-caste, light-skinned replacing outdated measures such as octaroon, quadroon etc as a measure of a persons place in the world.
Postcards from the edge
Peter Waples-Crowe / Jacob Tolo
Both artists share a love for the post card format in conveying an idea spontaneously. The intimacy of the compact size also transfers a privacy to the work.
These works are varied in their content and are from a time in Waples-Crowe’s life when he worked in HIV prevention and was in a serodiscordant relationship.
Many of Peters works were influenced by his Queer identity, where Jacobs strips back what lays under popular culture pertaining to his heritage and the tourist trade that surrounds it.