It’s a rare thing to have a space dedicated to LGBTIQ+ culture, and it’s with immense excitement and pride that we launched the visual arts programming at the Victorian Pride Centre in July this year.
The Pride Centre will provide opportunities for visual arts and archival display through programming, Pride Gallery exhibitions and display of art in other suitable spaces in the Pride Centre. Our visual arts programming will focus on art by LGBTIQ+ artists and/or art that focuses on LGBTIQ+ issues. Fine arts, community arts and archival materials can all contribute to exhibition and happenings. We hope to see visual arts exhibitions, installations and happenings that delight, celebrate, educate and provoke audiences.
The inaugural exhibition in the Pride Gallery is identity, adornment, transformation. Curator Mish Eisen brings Indigenous LGBTIQ+ artists Jenna Lee, Clint Lingard, Paul McCann, Dylan Mooney and Peter Waples-Crowe explore notions around discovery of identity, resonance of adornment and bearings of transformation from a LGBTIQ+ Indigenous contemporary lens.
A Visual Arts Working Group has been recruited through an Expression of Interest process and these volunteers will collaborate with the Pride Centre to program visual arts at the Pride Centre.
At this year’s national day of LGBTIQ+ giving at GiveOUT we are seeking community support to fund an exciting year of Visual Arts programming at the Victorian Pride Centre in 2022. You can donate towards the Victorian Pride Centre’s visual arts programming from now till midnight on Friday 15 October. Our target is $10,000.
Donations to LGBTIQ+ organisations on GiveOUT Day are doubled by GiveOUT and their partners with a maximum of $1000 given to each project. So, let’s reach $9000 in donations and make our $10,000 jackpot!
Bottom image: identity, adornment, transformation exhibition at the Pride Gallery, photo courtesy of Luke David