TRISH MORRISSEY, FRONT, 2005-2007
Front deals with the notion of borders, boundaries and the edge, using the family group and the beach setting as metaphors. For this work, I travelled to beaches in the UK and around Melbourne…
JON HENRY, STRANGER FRUIT
Stranger Fruit was created in response to the senseless murders of black men across the nation by police violence. Even with smart phones and dash cams recording the actions, more lives get cut short due to unnecessary and excessive violence…
ROTIMI FANI-KAYODE, SELECTED WORKS
Working during the height of the AIDS crisis and responding to the homophobia of both Thatcherite England and his home country of Nigeria, Fani-Kayode produced images that exalt queer black desire, call attention to the politics of race and representation, and explore notions of cultural identity and difference…
CHELLA MAN, THE DEVICE THAT TURNED ME INTO A CYBORG WAS BORN THE SAME YEAR I WAS, 2023
Co-commissioned by Sydney’s Powerhouse museum, short film The Device That Turned Me Into A Cyborg Was Born The Same Year I Was, explores actor and director Chella Man’s relationship with the cochlear implant, and the nuances of life on a continuum between the deaf and hearing worlds…
JESSICA YATROFSKY, PHOTOGRAPHY, A HISTORY OF MASTURBATION
The video chronicles an androgynous and tattooed young man, the type of model that wouldn’t be out of place in conceptual style bibles like Re-edition or Man About Town, posing, while a narrator asks the viewer, “Is this Art?,” or, “if the New York Times said this was art, would it be art?…
D’ANGELO LOVELL WILLIAMS, CONTACT HIGH, 2022
Contact High offers an expansive engagement with the visualisation of desire and depiction of the Black body. Williams’s narrative images reflect the many forms in which Black queer people exist and have existed historically within each other’s lives, picturing them as sitters, lovers, caregivers, or shadows…
CATHERINE OPIE, DYKE DECK, 1995
Catherine Opie’s legendary 52-piece Dyke Deck of playing cards. Released in 1995, they feature highly stylised portraits of Opie’s queer community, many friends and others cast during an open call in San Francisco…
LOUISE BOURGEOIS, PEELS A TANGERINE
I was making a series for Channel 4 television called ‘The Truth About Art.’ The series included three films—one about God, another about animals and the third about sex. Louise, I calculated, had things to say about all of them. But mostly I was interested in sex…
MAXINE WALKER, SELECTED WORKS, 1985-1997
In her 1995 series, ‘Untitled’, British-Jamaican photographer Maxine Walker disrupts the idea of an approved womanhood through a photo booth style montage of self-portraits, presented as if taken within seconds of each other…
KATY GRANNAN, POUGHKEEPSIE JOURNAL
Katy Grannan relies on documentary photography as a point of reference in order to merge reality and fiction, while capturing the subtleties of her sitters’ psychologies…
CINDY SHERMAN, DOLL CLOTHES, 1975
Doll Clothes 1975 is a short black and white silent film by the American artist Cindy Sherman that combines live action with animated sequences. The film begins with a shot of the cover of a book (made by the artist) which is decorated with a flowery border and photographic cut-outs of women wearing old-fashioned hats and clothes…
TROY MONTES-MICHIE, SELECTED COLLAGES, 2013/2014
The themes I’m exploring are the intersections of race and gender and the exotification of the black male body. A lot of the more recent works I’ve been doing are images of black men from pornography that are cut up and collaged…
ANNIE SPRINKLE, POST PORN MODERNIST, 1993
Post Porn Modernist chronicles Annie Sprinkle's careers as a sex worker, pro-sex activist, and artist. Sprinkle begins with her transformation from Ellen Steinberg to Annie Sprinkle, an act that prompted her sexual revolution…
TRACEY EMIN, MY BED, 1998
First created in 1998, it was exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1999 as one of the shortlisted works for the Turner Prize. It consisted of her bed with bedroom objects in a dishevelled state, and gained much media attention…
WHERE I’M FROM POEM
“Where I'm From” grew out of my response to a poem from Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet (Orchard Books, 1989; Theater Communications Group, 1991) by my friend, Tennessee writer Jo Carson. All of the People Pieces, as Jo calls them, are based on things folks actually said, and number 22 begins, “I want to know when you get to be from a place…
MIKE BOUCHET, UNTITLED VIDEO, 2011
It’s the first untitled work I’ve made. It’s composited from 10,000 porno videos that were downloaded off the Internet and 10,000 porno videos playing simultaneously in a big mosaic…
LORNA SIMPSON, SHE, 1992
Simpson focuses on challenging the construct of gender and questions society’s idea of femininity and how society thinks there is a direct link between codes of dress and femininity…
NONA FAUSTINE, WHITE SHOES, 2021
White Shoes is a collection of self-portraits taken in locations around New York that were central to the city’s once pivotal – and now largely obscured and unacknowledged – involvement in the slave trade…
WILLIAM E JONES, THE FALL OF COMMUNISM AS SEEN IN GAY PORNOGRAPHY, 1988
The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography (1998) is an important video from a moment in Jones’s career when he was beginning to leave behind the world of independent documentary cinema for a more free-wheeling practice that existed – and continues to exist – at the margins between several disciplines…
DREAD SCOTT, WHAT IS THE PROPER WAY TO DISPLAY A US FLAG?,1988
In 1989, while on display at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, What is the Proper Way…? became the center of national controversy over its use of the American flag. President Bush Sr. declared What is the Proper Way…