Database

Brian Fuata (b. 1978) is a Samoan artist born in Aotearoa / New Zealand and based in Sydney, Australia. In addition to a live art practice of structured improvisation, Fuata has developed a unique method of remote performance through email correspondence and text message exchanges. Alongside his solo practice, he is part of the duo Wrong Solo with Agatha Gothe-Snape. In April 2022, Fuata and artist Latai Taumoepeau curated *MONUMENTAL (working title)*, a weekend of multidisciplinary performance for the Art Gallery of New South Wales’s 150-year anniversary celebrations which was remounted as part of the Sydney Festival in January 2023. Fuata was the 2020 Winner of the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art, Helsinki. Past works include: *Untitled (Intermission)*, 2022 ANTI Festival Helsinki and Singapore Biennale (2022); *Five Columns*, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2020); *Apparitional Charlatan ~ Minor Appearances*, Biennale of Sydney (2020); *Care disfigurements (flowers)*, 4A Gallery Sydney for Hong Kong Art Fair, Hong Kong (2019); *Broadloom*, Murray Art Museum Albury (2019); *IWMLDFS (or MINIBAR)*, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2019); *The Guest House*, Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2018); *All Nothing*, Poetry Project, New York (2015); *All titles*, PERFORMA, New York (2015); *Untitled (a refit of the sheet)*, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2015); and *Points of Departure 1–3*, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2014).

Bundjalung woman Dr Bronwyn Bancroft (b. 1958) is an artist, activist, mentor and writer. Since the 1990s Bancroft has exhibited nationally and internationally. She has been a key player in the development of several cultural organisations including the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative, Sydney. Her painting *Prevention of AIDS* (1992) was used in a campaign to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS in Australia. Bancroft has a long history of involvement in community activism and arts administration. In the 1990s she was a Council Member of the National Gallery of Australia. She served on the boards of copyright collection agency Viscopy, the Australian Society of Authors and Tranby Aboriginal College, and the Artists Board at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) in Sydney. Her work in children’s literature received the prestigious Dromkeen Medal in 2009.

Wiradjuri/Ngunnawal, and Celtic artist Brook Andrew (b.1970) has made significant contributions to the art ecology with work spanning installation, photography and museum interventions. Andrew's practice takes interest in histories of colonisation, First Nations resistance, and the power structures of museums. His interdisciplinary practice challenges the limitations imposed by power structures, historical amnesia, stereotypes, and complicity. Léuli Eshrāghi has described the queer aspects of Andrew's work as inviting "the viewer to contemplate how architecture, social relations and cultural memory might look if Indigenous lineages to Ancestors, beyond the pale of assumed heterosexuality and docility to colonisation, were recognised." Andrew has exhibited internationally since 1996, with recent exhibitions being presented at Musee du Quai Branly, Paris (2020); Wuzhen International Art Exhibition (2019); Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea (PAC), Milan (2019); Musée d'ethnographie de Genève, Geneva (2017-2018); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2017); and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2014-15). Andrew was the artistic director of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney entitled *NIRIN* held across various Sydney venues in 2020. Andrews is represented by Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne.

C. Moore Hardy (b. 1955) is an Australian artist known for her extensive photographic documentation of the Sydney queer community since the late 1970s. Hardy's work has encompassed both freelance and commercial photography, featuring candid portraiture of community events, most notably the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, and in particular minority groups within the LGBTQI+ community. She successfully ran Starfish Studio Photography Studio/Gallery in Clovelly, NSW for 15 years. Her portraiture of Mardi Gras and minority groups within the LGBTQI+ community have created an archival legacy which speaks to the changing generational understandings and attitudes of and towards the Sydney queer community. Recently exhibited in NAS Gallery’s *Museum of Love and Protest* 2018, exhibition, Hardy spoke to the importance of photographic timing, having a visual language, a social conscience, community, feminism and art. Hardy completed a Printmaking and Photography Higher Art Certificate at the National Art School in 1989, and has also studied at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Technology Sydney, and Randwick TAFE.

Callum McGrath (b.1995) is an artist and researcher based in Naarm/Melbourne. McGrath’s desire to make and research stems from an interest in rearticulating and challenging dominant models and institutionalised aesthetics of historiography and archiving. McGrath’s research engages with underrepresented and undocumented aspects of queer history, by reimagining these pasts via an idiosyncratic and unconventional approach to image-based forms. McGrath’s practice rearticulates institutionalised aesthetics of historiography, memorials, and archiving. Among his recent exhibitions include; *The Party*, UNSW Galleries, Sydney (2023); *Embodied Knowledge*, Queensland Art Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2022); *The Weatherman*, Metro Arts, Brisbane (2021); *The Gay Agenda*, The Walls, Gold Coast (2021); *To Resound, Unbound*, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne (2021); and *Deviations*, Brisbane Art and Design Festival (2021). In 2022 McGrath curated a cinema program titled *In Queer Time* at the Australian Cinémathèque at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. McGrath is also a founding contributor to KINK, a collective researching a history of queer Australian art. McGrath is currently a PhD candidate at Monash Art Design and Architecture, Monash University.

Carole Wilson (b. 1960) is an Australian artist living and working in Ballarat, Victoria where she is Associate Professor in Visual Arts, Institute of Education, Arts and Community and Higher Degrees by Research Coordinator in the Graduate Research School at Federation University Australia. Carole has extensive supervision and examination experience of practice led research higher degrees in the visual arts. Her undergraduate study was at both the Canberra School of Art and Philip Institute of Technology, now RMIT, Melbourne and she completed a PhD at the University of Ballarat in 2001. Her original training was in printmaking and she was a founding member of Jillposters, feminist poster group, in 1983 and worked at Another Planet Posters, Melbourne. Carole has held regular solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions nationally and internationally. For the past twenty years she has utilised discarded and salvaged materials such as floral carpets, maps and atlases to create works which engage with aspects of botany, garden history, travel and historical ornament. In recent years she has undertaken residencies in Italy, the US, Malaysia and the Netherlands which have all had a significant impact on her work. She is represented in many public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, the Powerhouse Museum, State Library of Victoria and a number of regional and university galleries. Her posters are in museum collections in Finland, the Czech Republic, Russia and Poland.

Dr Christian Thompson AO (b. 1978) is an Australian-born contemporary artist whose work explores notions of identity, cultural hybridity and history. Formally trained as a sculptor, Thompson’s multidisciplinary practice engages mediums such as photography, video, sculpture, performance and sound. His work focuses on the exploration of identity, sexuality, gender, race and memory. In his live performances and conceptual portraits he inhabits a range of personas achieved through handcrafted costumes, carefully orchestrated poses and backdrops. In 2010 Thompson made history when he became the first Aboriginal Australian to be admitted into the University of Oxford in its 900-year history. He is currently a research affiliate at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Thompson holds a Doctorate of Philosophy (Fine Art), Trinity College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, Master of Theatre, Amsterdam School of Arts, Das Arts, The Netherlands, Masters of Fine Art (Sculpture) RMIT University and Honours (Sculpture) RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia and a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. His works are held in major international and national collections. In 2018 he was awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to the visual arts as a sculptor, photographer, video and performance artist, and as a role model for young Indigenous artists. Thompson has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, having been included in exhibitions such as *Australia* at the Royal Academy for the Arts, London; *We Bury Our Own*, The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, Valencian Institute of Modern Art, Valencia, Spain; *The Other and Me*, The Sharjah Museum, United Arab Emirates; *Hijacked III*, QUOD Gallery, Derby, United Kingdom; *Shadow life*, Bangkok Art and Cultural centre, Bangkok, Thailand; and *The beauty of Distance/Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age*, 17th Biennale of Sydney. A major survey exhibition of Thompson’s work, *Christian Thompson: Ritual Intimacy* toured nationally from 2017 to 2019.

Christine Dean (b. 1963) is an artist, educator and writer who has been exhibiting since 1988. From the early 1990s she has exhibited in many LGBTQI+ exhibitions including *Juice*, Art Gallery of New South Wales (1997); *The Oscar Wilde Reading Group*, Raw Nerve Gallery (1998); *Bent Western*, Blacktown Arts Centre (2008); *From Straight to Gay and Back Again*, Alaska Projects (2015); *Can’t Touch This*, Verge Gallery (2017); *40 Years of Queer Art*, Comber Street Studios (2018); *The Party*, UNSW Galleries; and *Braving Time*, NAS Gallery (both 2023). In 1986 Christine completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sydney majoring in Fine Arts, a Diploma in Secondary Art Education from Sydney Teachers College in 1989, a Graduate Diploma in Painting, Sydney College of the Arts in 1990, a Masters of Fine Arts, University of NSW in 2003 and a PhD from the University of NSW in 2010. In 2000 she was awarded a Pollock-Krasner fellowship and in 2001 undertook a residency at the 18th Street Arts Centre, Los Angeles, as part of an Australia Council research grant. The focus of Dean’s art practice has been developing a relationship between abstraction and text. Much of the text included is both poetic and political. The painting *Drag Queen* (2015) belongs to a series produced while living in Kings Cross. The text included is a quote from an interview conducted by Roberta Perkins that was published in her 1983 book *The Drag Queen Scene* and the shimmering colours and design of the painting visualise the decor of nightclubs from the era.

Clifford Last (b.1918-1991) was a sculptor known for his deftly crafted forms. Last was born in Hampshire, England and left school at sixteen, instead undertaking an apprenticeship at his father’s shop-fitting workshop where he learned basic woodworking skills. While studying sculpture in London, Last would visit exhibitions of Modern sculpture and had a particular affinity for works by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. Last arrived in Melbourne in 1947 and enrolled for further study at the Royal Melbourne Technical College. His first solo exhibition in 1948 was held at Georges Gallery in Collins Street where he showed small-scale wood and stone carvings inspired by Hepworth and Moore. Last would go on to receive wide acclaim for his sculptures, in 1989 the National Gallery of Victoria staged a sprawling retrospective of his work. In the television series *Housewife, 49* (2006) which is based on the diary entries of Last’s mother Nella Last, it is suggested throughout that Last was homosexual.

Courtney Coombs makes art, writes, and facilitates to make sense of the world and their place in it. They are heavily influenced by situations and captivated by the relational. Employing queer-centric, anti-spectacular methodologies, they privilege periods of observing, thinking, feeling, learning, and unlearning as much as realising a final form, which often involves reimagining everyday encounters. Driven by concepts and seduced by the potential of uncertainty and ambiguity, their minimally presented liaisons include objects, installations, 2-dimensional works, moving images and sound, discourse, dialogue, and community building. Coombs imbues these subjective and gestural propositions with a hopeful criticality concerned with disrupting dominant narratives about worth and value and prompting different ways of seeing, understanding and being. Coombs is currently based between Norway and Australia. They have exhibited throughout Australia and internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Recent solo exhibitions include: *Diamonds in the sky*, Schmick Contemporary, Sydney (with Jordan Azcune) (2021), *I can't sleep when I'm anxious*, CARPARK Milani Gallery, Brisbane (2020), *The time of light*, Metro Arts, Brisbane (2020); and *Field of Vision*, IMA Belltower, Brisbane (2019). Coombs has been the recipient of several awards, including the Australia Council for the Arts Resilience: Adapt Grant (2020), Australia Council for the Arts Development Grant (2018, 2017, 2016), Arts Queensland Queensland Arts Showcase Program Grant (2016), Australia Council for the Arts Arts Projects Grant (2016), Arts Queensland Individuals Fund Grant (2020, 2015), Australia Council for the Arts Early Career New Work Grant (2013). They have attended national and international residency programs and was recently awarded the Australia Council for the Arts Helsinki International Artist Programme Residency (2020). Their work is held in public and private collections.

Crystal Love (b.1970) is an artist, performer, activist, educator and mentor, and a respected Sistergirl Tiwi Elder. As the epitome of Territory royalty, gracefully residing between Darwin and the enchanting Tiwi Islands, she is revered as the queen of the Island, earning admiration and adoration for her unwavering love and compassion. A true headlining act, Crystal has performed across the continent and dominates the stage effortlessly, leaving audiences in awe. Crystal made local government history as the first Indigenous transgender woman to be elected to the Tiwi Shire Council in 2012, and was appointed as a Rainbow Ambassador for World Pride Sydney in 2023. In her tireless fight for transgender rights, Crystal Love is a force to be reckoned with, an emblem of community strength and resilience. Her infectious spirit is certain to leave an indelible mark on your heart, reminding you of the power of pure love and acceptance.

Daniel Mudie Cunningham (b. 1975) is an artist, curator, writer and lecturer who lives and works on Gadigal Country. With a career spanning three decades, his practice draws upon and remixes the image streams of art history, queer politics, pop culture, performance and music through video, photography and performance. In 2023, his work was the subject of the survey exhibition *Are You There?* curated by James Gatt at Wollongong Art Gallery. A comprehensive monograph will follow in 2024 with texts by Gatt, Judy Annear, Gary Carsley, José Da Silva, Helen Grace, Ann Finegan, Carrie Miller and Fiona Kelly McGregor. As curator and writer, his work has consistently engaged with queer performative art practices. Most recently as curator, he was guest co-artistic director of Liveworks for Performance Space (2023) and is the curator of Cementa (2024). He has written widely on contemporary Australian art and culture, and teaches at the National Art School.