Queer As You Are

Visual Artists’ News Sheet | September – October 2021

Exhibition Profile15

Queer As You Are

LUAN GALLERY PRESENT A THEMATIC OVERVIEW OF THEIR SUMMER SHOW.

Austin Hearne, Divine Divider, 2019, ink-jet print and wax on painted board; image courtesy of the artist and Luan Gallery.

AS PART OF its summer programme, Luan Gallery presents ‘Queer As You Are’ – a group exhibition of Irish artists which explores the gaps and fissures of queer presence within Irish history and considers how queer historical discourses, or lack thereof, populate our past, present and future.

The exhibition features artists Kian Benson Bailes, Stephen Doyle, Austin Hearne, Breda Lynch and Conor O’Grady, who individually and collectively examine the tension in translating different historical, social, and cultural contexts for contemporary audiences. Addressing the lack of archives and objects to assist in their storytelling, each supplement alternative materials, drawing on psychoanalysis, activism, archaeology, hook-up culture, the occult and autobiographical accounts.

Kian Benson Bailes is an Irish artist residing in the West of Ireland. His multifaceted practice engages with stories from the fringes of Irish heritage, creating alternative spaces for thinking about regional histories. Drawing parallels between the aesthetics of rural and marginalised communities, he builds alternative narratives using figuration and motifs associated with rurality, superstitions and folklore. Employing papier-mâché and non-precious materials, he produces proxy artefacts to allow for a rereading of our heritage. For Bailes, neither craft nor queer are essentialist terms, each with complex identities that resist easy definitions.

Cork-based artist, Stephen Doyle, is credited with presenting the first piece to openly discuss transgender identity on the walls of the National Gallery of Ireland, after being shortlisted for the Zurich Portrait Prize. Doyle’s Attending Colaiste, 2021, is a critical examination of the role of education and the institution in the lives of queer youth. Succinctly, Doyle illustrates the isolation and shame propagated by a lack of representation for queer, trans, and non-binary youth

in educational settings. The duality of these self-portraits is consequential of the withdrawal of queer advocacy and how it directly impacts the futures that queer youth imagine for themselves and for others – an issue perpetuated by the catholic structured education system in Ireland.

In his practice Austin Hearne attempts to (re)appropriate queer religious imagery, seeking to celebrate queer memory whilst simultaneously acting as a point of resistance. Despite holding a staunch position himself, Hearne’s practice is a nuanced reflection on religion and suffering, rather than sacrilege. The infiltration of religious institutions into queer Irish life is represented through a serious of unapologetically camp domestic and interior items. ‘Queer As You Are’ presents his latest works, Divine Divider, 2019, and a series of self-portraits, For Ray, 2021, which juxtapose the ‘hypocritical drag’ of the church and Hearne’s reflections on his own bodily integrity and physicality.

In her on-going project, ‘Fragments of a lost civilisation’, Breda Lynch endeavours to make visible the hidden history of women’s same-sex desire. A continuous issue, lesbian queerness and sexuality is still largely invisible, in part because it wasn’t seen as so significant in legal and religious terms. Her research-based practice presents a series of ‘foraged’ images from obscure archives, popular culture, mainstream media platforms, collective memories and underground information structures as a method to visualise new inclusive realities. Play appears important to Lynch’s scholarship and audience engagement, noting that if we failed to record female sexuality, “we may as well have fun with it”. Lynch engages with methodologies and approaches that respond to the history of mechanical reproduction, digital reproduction online, and the persistent circulation of images in the public domain, while also querying our relationship with the image, its consumption,

distribution, reproduction, value and authenticity.

In his work, multi-disciplinary artist Conor O’Grady highlights the symbiotic relationship between marginalised groups, mapping isolated spaces within urban-rural settings as sites of ‘promise’ or ‘victimisation’. He offers unique perspectives on class, generation and public space, and the negotiations of safety by closeted gay men outside the commodified ‘gay bar’. His interview-based practice documents groups, whose lives have not been affected by the changing political landscape and who actively aim to leave little or no trace of their existence, translating these conversations into moving image, site-specific intervention, and archival processes. At times the viewer may feel like passive, voyeuristic bystanders or active witnesses to the experiences of the unheard.

Government recognition of LGBTQIA rights in Ireland has expanded greatly over the past two decades; however, queer visibility and acceptance are relatively recent developments in the social and legal landscape. At present Ireland has a significant number of social spaces and support centres for the LGBTQIA community, yet the midlands still remain a grey area with limited infrastructure and resources. Responding to this void, Luan Gallery has temporarily transformed into a multi-textural space, with the aim of establishing meaningful connections that will hopefully persist beyond the exhibition’s closure.

‘Queer As You Are’ continues at Luan Gallery until 19 September.

luangallery.ie