Bowery Gallery

The Bowery gallery presents ‘Fabulous & Impossible - The Cult of Leigh Bowery’, an exhibition featuring the visual art of Sydney-based queer artist and multidisciplinary pistol-whip Tom Christophersen.

Featuring a collection of new and pre-existing works, Christophersen’s beautifully camp and subtly strange portraiture and video work celebrates the impact of queer visionaries, especially Bowery, on his contemporary arts practice.

Parallels of persona and character, performance art and the ultimate subversion of popular culture through a queer lens echo through this glamorous and twisted body of mixed media works on paper, incorporating both drawing and painting.

‘Fabulous & Impossible - The Cult of Leigh Bowery’ is for lovers of meticulously made things which glory in the uncomfortable and underground, the shock of the spectacle, and the delicious way the queer community creates art on their own terms from their own lived experiences.

tomchristophersen.com

Exhibition: 28 January - 19 March 2022

The solo exhibition ‘Portraiture’ shows Su Yang’s new series of oil paintings that explore the endemic anxiety that many women seem to experience regarding the shape of their bodies, whatever their size, age, colour, and ability. Yang combines a focused study of the representation of the female form with the art practice to explore the elements of female beauty and the body from a feminist perspective. She collaborates with influencers and artists who are also interested in exploring and challenging the norm of female beauty. Yang uses oil to portray and to present the images of these women with different shapes, skin colours, and appearances.

Biography

杨苏 Su Yang (b. China 1986) is a Chinese artist living and working between Melbourne and Beijing. Yang is also a researcher in Chinese feminism and feminist art studies. Her doctoral research project re-theorizes Chinese feminist art through the case studies of Chinese women artists and the new generation of Chinese feminist artists. Yang combines a focused study of the representation of the female form with the art practice to explore the elements of female beauty and the body.

Her work has been exhibited and screened at institutions internationally, including Anderson Gallery in Buffalo, Shanghai M50 Creative Park, Tsinghua University, 798 Art District in Beijing, University of Melbourne, Astor Theatre and Kino Cinemas in Melbourne, Lion Arts Centre in Adelaide, Toronto Reference Library, OCAD University Art Museum, and Jorge Eliecer Gaitan Municipal Theatre in Bogota, Colombia.

Her exhibitions have been noted by the Chinese Ministry of Culture’s official website and journal and reviewed extensively in Chinese press including Art China, Arton, China Craft & Art, Sohu News, Tsinghua University, Art Info, and China Writer, China Tourism and Photography Magazine; internationally, including Nv Voice (Feminist Voice), the University of Melbourne, Australia Contemporary Art and Feminism, Feminist Art Collection in Canada, Women in Art, SUNY Buffalo, and Art Voice in the US.

Yang’s films have been selected in Academy Awards qualifying events including Rhode Island International Film Festival and St Kilda Film Festival in 2021. She won People of Color the International Cultural Exchange in New York in 2020 and Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF)’s Powershorts Short Film Competition in 2017. Her films have been screened at MIFF 2017 and other international film festivals in the USA, India, Canada, Iran, UK, Portugal, Nigeria, Mexico, and Brazil.

suyangvisual.com

Exhibition: 12 April - 15 May 2022

Reclaiming Narratives: Melbourne Artists respond to I Am Not A Virus is an artist-led exhibition series to confront xenophobia, bust stereotypes and provide a counter-narrative to issues of long-standing racism in Australia that are revealing themselves in the face of COVID-19. The project responds to the increase in racist attacks including verbal threats, physical intimidation, denial of services, workplace discrimination and being coughed and spat upon since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Artists

This project includes works by Sophia Cai, Yunyang Cen, Yeon Ju Chun, Tessa-May Chung, Jacqueline Dixon, Sai-Wai Foo, Jingwen (Jina) He, Derek Ho, Wina Jie, Judy Kuo, Phu La, Youbi Lee, Mimi Leung, Feifei Liao, Nathan Liow, Jacqueline Lo, Jocelin Meredith, Deborah Ong & Joe Paradise Lui, Sean Stephen Ryan, Elina Simbolon, Sicheng Shuai, Sarah Tan & Deborah Faye Lee, Clarine Wilmar, Benjamin Tsok Wee Yap, Kelly Yoon, and Maggz & Amy Zhang

Project partners

This Melbourne project has been produced by Lena Nahlous (Diversity Arts Australia) and co-curated by Wilson Yeung Chun Wai (Curatorial Collective) and Kevin Bathman (Diversity Arts Australia). We would like to acknowledge the project support provided by Katherine Wai Yee Lee, Jan Wing Ting Sze, Ava Dong, Helen Chung, Jahan Rezakhanlou-Taubman, and Mara Braun; the exhibition design of Tiger Yuanlong Zheng; and the advisory support of Dr Tammy Wong Hulbert (RMIT) and Kelly Yoon.

This project is an initiative of Diversity Arts Australia in partnership with the Asian Australian Alliance, Democracy in Colour and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art with financial support from the Australia Council for the Arts, Creative Victoria, Create NSW, City of Sydney, City of Parramatta and Inner West Council.

Project supporters from Melbourne include RMIT Curatorial Collective, Creative Brimbank, Melbourne Fringe Festival, RMIT Contemporary Art and Social Transformation (CAST) research group, RMIT INTERSECT, and RMIT Student Life.

Image credit - Sai-Wai Foo, Eat Your Words, 2020/2021, Polyester, cotton poplin, polyester/cotton thread, cotton embroidery thread, recycled plastic pellets. Machine-stitching, hand finishing and hand embroidery

Exhibition: 4 December 2021 - 21 January 2022