MARTHA ROSLER, SEMIOTICS OF THE KITCHEN, 1975
In unsmiling deadpan, Martha Rosler parodies the role of the perfect TV housewife and cook. Running through an alphabet of kitchen utensils, she demonstrates each for the camera…
DEBORAH WILLIS, I MADE SPACE FOR A GOOD MAN, 2009
Printed at the Brandywine Workshop and Archives in Philadelphia, this color lithograph features a film photography triptych of Deborah Willis (presumably late 1975 or early 1976). In two of the three self-portraits, Willis sits reclining in a wicker chair wearing a black dress, eyes closed or cast down…
ARTHUR JAFA, LOVE IS THE MESSAGE, THE MESSAGE IS DEATH, 2016
From photographs of civil rights leaders watermarked with “Getty Images” to helicopter views of the LA Riots to a wave of bodies dancing to “The Dougie,” the meticulously edited 7-minute video suspends viewers in a swelling, emotional montage that is a testament to Jafa’s profound ability to mine, scrutinize, and reclaim media’s representational modes and strategies…
PIPILOTTI RIST, EVER IS OVER ALL, 1997
From her early music-video-style works to her later immersive projection environments, Rist’s unique artistic vocabulary is rooted in popular culture, technology, and historical feminist video art…
PETER HUJAR, LOVE & LUST, 1969-1986
Celebrated and revered by artists, the work of Peter Hujar remains something of a public secret, but his photographs dealing with sex and eroticism, made between the years 1969 and 1986, have come to define a certain era in New York…
AYANA V JACKSON, TAKE ME TO THE WATER
Jackson uses the archival impulse to assess the impact of the colonial gaze on the history of photography and its relationship to ideas about the body. She uses her lens to deconstruct 19th and early 20th-century portraiture as a means for questioning photography’s role in constructing identities…
CARLA J WILLIAMS, SELECT WORKS, 1983-1986
Making self-portraits and using instant film and prints, I knew I had complete control over the images and thus invested in them a degree of freedom that I might not have if I had thought anyone would ever see them, because I didn't think anyone ever would…
MATT GRUBB, BRIAN SINGER 2001
Brian Singer 2001 is a conceptual recreation of the film director Bryan Singer’s infamous gay pool parties from the early/mid 2000’s…
LYLE ASHTON HARRIS, AMERICAS, 1987-88
Harris produced an early series of black and white gelatin silver photographic prints titled “Americas” in 1987-88, in which he explored issues of race, gender, and sexuality through visual representation and their intersection in the formation of subjectivity…
JOHN COPLANS, SELECTED PHOTOGRAPHS
I photograph my body. I generalize it by beheading myself to make my body more like any other man's. Nakedness removes the body from the specificity of time: unclothed, it belongs to the past, present, and future…
BARBARA NITKE, AMERICAN ECSTASY, 1982-1991
American Ecstasy is a memoir in pictures and words of the twelve years photographer Barbara Nitke spent shooting stills on porn movie sets in New York City…
DANIEL RAMPULLA, WILD PLACE
Daniel Rampulla’s Wild Place is a series of photographs that builds an exploration of youth and queerness. These enigmatic images assemble through a series of noir-outdoor portraits, a personal and voyeuristic vision of intimacy…
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…