Pomogaze 2015

Leeds City Art Gallery

11 July 2015
Queer Artist talks

Nic Brannan
Explores none gender specific identiites using media platforms, films, self narrating
through his body.

Selfie reclaiming the self as multiplicity of gender and identity, looking at duality
and symmetry.
Emily Towler
The body is not a thing, it is a situation it is our grasp on the world and on our
sketch (Simone de Beauvoir)

Influenced by Cindy Sherman 1979 #35 and Claude Cahun ( and Marcel Moore)
1928 reflecting womenhood comparing which times were better past or present
regarding roles of women and community. Through the character of Marple who
has a fractured identity

Gender binary Machine, focusing on the male gaze and how it can be debilitating
to women. Towler straps the machine on to her body and walks around on her
hands and knees.

The machine contains narratives from the public about their comments and
understanding of gender binary and how this issues have impacted on them. The
intense male stare of Nigel Burgess eyes leer at the top of the machine down on
to her body. Inspired by Jana Sterbak Remote Control 1989.

Bruce Rimell

The queer and the Fernal

Structure of identities
The Fernal world, he created his own language integrating the queer as a positive
attribute of human identity and quality.
Mythical fictional language

Aiming for holistic archetype ideal of sexuality

Connor Quill
@k_kdance
Experiences coming from young people (Grants for the arts funded).
Consulted with young people to explore homophobia written letters and then
created dance pieces in relation to this work.
The work has been shown professionally twice and should be fully ready for spring
next year.
Comments
People can be scared of gay people outside of a normative system. Particularly
with gay men; they can be subjected to infantilization being referred to a gay boy
Not a man or a proper grown up.
(infantilization: to keep in or reduce to an infantile state/ to treat or regard as
infantile or immature).

Ryan Thompson
Performance artist, got people to read bed time stories to him. One participant
repeatedly came back because he enjoyed the intimacy of getting in bed with him
and reading to him.
Out of House and Home
Eating ginger bread- Hansel and Gretel, a method of sugar coating childrens
homelessness.
Unicorns- Queer imagery which he identified with, he didnt identify with references
to being a fairy. He found a legend where a dragon fought with a unicorn and if
either ever won the whole world would be destroyed.

He also recognised that Unicorns represent a phallic symbol and in one

performance did embody a unicorn itself. Though he indicated that he didnt like it
as an artistic experience.
Recently has developed new work where every chess piece is a unicorn and then
turned the chess board into a disco ball room.
Video of wizard of Oz used to annoy him when he saw the wicked witch walking
down stairs and she would flash her legs which werent painted green. So he
created his own short video with brightly painted green legs and walk down stairs
in acknowledgement of this work. Additionally he also spray painted the ruby
slippers silver to nod to the original text. The film used ruby coloured slippers as
they translated better on big screen in Technicolor and this has continued ever
since with the exception of Wicked.
Paul Jex

Looking at works of other artists focuses on artists exploring colour.

Created an exhibition with the words dates to be confirmed underneath each
poster. Nodding to potential exhibitions which could be created in the future.
Derek Jarman-Absalon conceptual piece, involving two artist who both ended up
dying of AIDS related illness. One piece a cell structure sculpture featuring the
same tone of red as the other artist who created a collages of newspaper articles
and covered them in red paint
Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg
Both worked in white- gay artist, tendancy to work in one colour- and were in a
relationship with each other.
Obituaries of artists who died one after another.
Over several year he has been collecting articles of Howard Hodgkin which have
featured each year in the guardian.
Sweet wrapper collection, which compares two types of wrapper, the newer ones
decompose quicker due to the materials theyre made from.
Three types of drag
Gender performativity is a term created by poststructuralist feminist philosopher Judith Butler in her 1990 book Gender Trouble,
which has subsequently been used in a variety of academic fields
Gender drag
Temporal drag
Abstract drag