Edging away from the Optic
October – November 2023
Alex Walker, Benjamin Bannan, Arthur Nyakuengama, Jordan Azcune, Henry Wolff and Tay Haggarty, with a score by Teagan Ramsay and Christopher Haugh, exhibited at Intermission Gallery
(Monash University, MADA Graduate exhibition)
Curated by Teagan Ramsay
Time is often socially marked through life events such as birth, marriage, reproduction, and death, but how do we trace time when it isn’t tethered to a linear structure? Where can we expect our future to take us, if the rift in the circle of time spans generations and is too slippery to grasp? Queer temporalities refers to non-linear, subjective, and unconventional temporal frameworks within the LGBTQIA+ community. Similar to the fluidity of queer expression, queer temporalities rupture and upend normative and linear experiences of time, forming reconfigurations that enable the past to assume new meanings as it intertwines with the present.
Reflecting the transient, the fleeting, and the contingency of queer temporalities in artistic practice, Edging away from the optic presents recent work by Alex Walker, Benjamin Bannan, Arthur Nyakuengama, Jordan Azcune, Henry Wolff and Tay Haggarty, with a score by Teagan Ramsay and Christopher Haugh. The artworks move away from direct representation and instead obscure themselves through processes of embodied temporal dissonance. Through strategies of visual coding, haptic movements and obfuscation, these artworks speak to queer experiences, histories and desires, while resisting commodified queer aesthetics.
The exhibition also featured an architectural intervention, which took the form of a yellow vinyl curtain. This work was a collaboration between Ashika Harper and Teagan Ramsay, and was used to mark the threshold between the gallery spaces to differentiate between the two exhibitions.
Listen: Teagan Ramsay and Christopher Haugh, Ruminate I, 2023. Sonic score, 5:00 min
Exhibition review by Ruby Benjamin.
Intermission Gallery, Monash University MADA. Photo by Teagan Ramsay.
Intermission Gallery, Monash University MADA. Photo by Andrew Curtis.
Intermission Gallery, Monash University MADA. Photo by Andrew Curtis.
Intermission Gallery, Monash University MADA. Photo by Andrew Curtis.
Intermission Gallery, Monash University MADA. Photo by Andrew Curtis.
Intermission Gallery, Monash University MADA. Photo by Andrew Curtis.
Intermission Gallery, Monash University MADA. Photo by Andrew Curtis
Intermission Gallery, Monash University MADA. Photo by Andrew Curtis.