Database

Deej Fabyc (b.1961) works with performance, installation, photography and video. Their work has for many years addressed the psychological dimensions of the personal and political experience of trauma. Current performance work is engaged with wicked embodied mapping of narratives of awkwardness, neurodiversity, ageing, loss, mental health and chronic illness. Fabyc has performed in museums, night clubs, and the street internationally since the 1980s. Performances have occurred in *How do I look* with GraceGraceGrace at Guest Projects London, *Theatres of Contagion Conference *at Birkbeck London, and *Collaborations* with Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens in Documenta both in Athens and Kassel. Deej has held a one year residency bursary at Artsadmin, London and has completed residencies at Dartington School of Art, Devon, the Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, and Rules and Regs, at A Space Gallery, Southampton. Significant performances include *Details* at L’abracada Festival International d’Art Contemporani, Castell de la Bisbal, Spain 2006; *And She Watched*, Trace Installation Artspace, Cardiff, 2005 and Kingsgate Gallery, London 2004; and in *Don’t Call it Performance*, Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid and Centro Parraga, Murcia, Spain, 2003. Fabyc has a highly collaborative practice and has been a founding member of several collaborative projects including the underground feminist art collective JILLPOSTERS in Melbourne in the 1980s, and Elastic ARI Sydney 2000-2001 Elastic Residence, a London ARI 2004-11 of KISSS, an international curatorium of artists working with issues of surveillance. Since 2018 Fabyc has been Chair of FBI, a feminist network of artists. They are the Executive director of Live Art Ireland – Elain Bheo Centre for Art Research and Development at Milford House. Fabyc is Australian, but was born in London, spending their early childhood in England and Ireland before travelling to Australia aboard the P&O Arcadia to start secondary school. They completed their BFA at Southern Cross University and gained an MFA from the University of New South Wales Art and Design school. In 1996, their work was featured in Elizabeth Ashburn's book *Lesbian Art: An Encounter with Power*, an Art and Australia publication. Fabyc has taught performance/fine art in the HE sector, the prison system and community settings for the past 20 years and currently lives in Tipperary Ireland whilst lecturing at the School of Art, Architecture & Design, London Metropolitan University.

Destiny Deacon (b. 1957) is a descendant of the KuKu (Far North Queensland) and Erub/Mer (Torres Strait) people. Since the 1990s Deacon's predominately photographic and video work explores the politics of Indigenous identity through humorous and provocative imagery that reconfigures and relies on racist and clichéd stereotypes. Combining autobiography and fictions, Deacon's works offer a viewpoint of Australian life from a Blak, queer woman's perspective. Deacon was the subject of a major retrospective at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia (2020). Deacon was included in the 10th Havana Bienal, Havana, Cuba (2009); Documenta 11, curated by Okwui Enwezor, Kassel, Germany (2002); and most recently *QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection* (2021), presented at the NGV International.

D Harding (b. 1982) works in a wide variety of media to explore the visual and social languages of their communities as cultural continuum. A descendant of the Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal peoples, they draw upon and maintain the spiritual and philosophical sensibilities of their cultural inheritance within the framework of contemporary art internationally. Harding’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2021); Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, Aotearoa New Zealand (2021); Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne (2019); Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2019, 2015); and Milani Gallery, Brisbane (2019, 2018, 2017, 2016). Recent group exhibitions include Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki (2022); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2022); Tate Modern, London (2021); Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2020); Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2019); PAC Milano, Milan (2019); Lyon Biennial, Lyon, France (2019); Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE (2019); Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2018); Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK (2018); and TarraWarra Biennial, Healesville, Victoria (2018). Their work can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Artspace Mackay, Mackay; Darebin Art Collection, Victoria; Griffith University Art Collection, Brisbane; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane; Monash University Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Tate Modern, London, UK; University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane; and University of Sydney, Sydney. In July 2019 Harding was awarded a Doctorate of Visual Arts from the Queensland College of Arts, Griffith University. They are currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at QCA. Born in 1982 in Moranbah, Australia, Harding lives and works in Brisbane.

Adela Dora Ohlfsen-Bagge (22 August 1869 – 7 February 1948), known professionally as Dora Ohlfsen, was an Australian sculptor and art medallist. Born in Ballarat in 1869, she left Australia in 1886 and lived most of her life in Rome. Her first prominent work was a bronze medallion, *The Awakening of Australian Art* (1907), which won an award at the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition in London and was purchased for the Petit Palais in Paris. In 1948 Ohlfsen and her lifelong partner, Russian countess Hélène de Kuegelgen (Elena von Kügelgen), were found dead in their apartment in Rome as a result of a gas leak. The police deemed the death accidental, but there were speculations that it was suicide. The women were buried together in the city's non-Catholic cemetery, and friends packed up the contents of Ohlfsen's studio, which have never been traced. Twenty-five of Ohlfsen's works are known to have survived, out of at least 121.

Douglas (Doug) Erskine (1949-1988) originally studied with Ian McKay at the East Sydney Technical College in Darlinghurst in 1970. He completed a Diploma of Sculpture at the Newcastle College of Advanced Education in the 1970s, and also worked at the Hobart School of Art, Tasmania. Erskine's work was included in *An Exhibition of Work by Homosexual and Lesbian Artists* at Watters Gallery, Sydney, in 1978, and was also featured in the 2002 exhibition *Dead Gay Artists* at Tin Sheds, Sydney. He produced installation works, and also artists' books. His name is included on *The Australian AIDS memorial quilt in memory of those cared for by Community Support Network, NSW* (c. 1990), which is now in the collection of the Powerhouse, Sydney.

Drew Pettifer (b. 1980) is an artist and academic based in Naarm Melbourne. Working across photography, video, print, performance, sculpture, textiles, and installation, his practice explores queer history, the archive, power, desire, representation, and contemporary social politics. He uses creative practice as a vehicle to foreground critical queer histories which have been systematically under-represented or excluded from dominant archives. Recent exhibitions include: *Closer Together*, Hong Kong Arts Centre (2024); *Melbourne Now*, National Gallery of Victoria (2023); *Forget Me Not: A queer end to the bushrangers*, Sarah Scout Presents (2023); *QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection*, National Gallery of Victoria (2022); *Too Much is Never Enough*, Space Place Gallery, Russia (2021); *XX*, Hong Kong Art Centre (2020-21); *A Sorrowful Act: The Wreck of the Zeewijk*, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth (2020); *Obsession: Devil in the Detail*, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington (2019); and *Equal Love*, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei (2018). His work is held in various collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia, Museum of Australian Photography and City of Melbourne's Arts and Heritage Collection, as well as private collections nationally and internationally.

eX de Medici (b. 1959) was born in the Riverina area of rural southern New South Wales in the township of Coolamon, though largely grew up in Canberra. De Medici studied at the Canberra School of Art, where she specialised in performance, installation and photography. Since then, de Medici's practice has broadened to incorporate photography, painting and drawing. De Medici creates finely detailed drawings and watercolours, reflecting her interest in natural history illustration, especially watercolours. Her work is predominantly known for the incorporation of techniques and methods from her entwined practice as a tattooist. The artist got her first tattoo in 1988 in Melbourne and from this point focused increasingly on the application of line and form on the human body, reflecting an ongoing interest in the vanitas tradition. Common motifs in her works include skulls, guns and flora. During the 1980s, when fears of HIV/AIDS were circulating in Australia and internationally, she exhibited images of tattooed skin next to framed blood samples and the stained swabs that were the byproducts of the process of inking the body. Works utilising blood and swabs such as *Godscience V (Stars)* and *VI* were exhibited in the National Gallery of Australia's landmark 1994 exhibition *Don't Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS* and subsequently acquired in 1996. De Medici's work is represented in the collection of the NGA and most State galleries, and she has exhibited extensively within Australia and internationally.

Fiona Macdonald is an artist and theorist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her practice embraces a range of mediated processes, installations, and publications, and maintains an allegiance to the possibilities of a critical conceptual practice through collaborative acts of discourse. Her 2008 PhD thesis, in the critical theory of the remake in contemporary practice, is an investigation of contemporary relations to Conceptual Art, through the grammatologies of translation and dissemination. She is a member of the Redrawing Collective who investigate the remediation of existing practices and the productive capacities of dysfunctional collaboration. She is coordinator of the Graduate Theory program in the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture at Monash University, and also teaches in the Fine Arts Honours studio program.