Queer – An Australian Exhibition Celebrating LGBQTIA+ Art, Stories And History
The National Gallery Of Victoria (NGV) is hosting an exhibition titled Queer: Stories From The NGV Collection. The exhibition features artworks from the NGV Collection and celebrates the ability of art to create narratives of the LGBTQIA+ experience. The exhibition is free to enter and continues until August 22, 2022.
“Queer as a concept runs against all definitions, all fixed meaning, forever questioning, redeploying, twisting terms, texts and itself from conventional usage,” writes Professor Christoph Ribbat, author of Queer And Straight Photography on the NGV site.
It’s a fitting quote that sums up the essence of the exhibition. Queer utilises diverse media including painting, drawing, photography, decorative arts, fashion, video, sculpture, and design to navigate and explore the impossibility of defining queerness.
By using these media forms, artists offer critiques of queerdom and work to construct its very fabric along the way. An important note from curators of this exhibition is that queer artworks that present and interpret queer concepts and stories involve a sense of intersectionality. The LGBTQIA+ rights movement has a deep kinship with other sociopolitical movements and both influences and is influenced by them.
Queer: Stories From The NGV Collection features 400 artworks spanning from antiquity to the present, which makes it one of the most historically expansive thematic presentations by an Australian art institution ever shown.
The exhibition has a series of digital and live accoutrements available that include a complimentary audio guide, events and talks that introduce important themes and stories from the exhibition and a podcast hosted by Courtney Act produced by the NGV. To find more information and resources, visit the NGV Collection website.
