Database

Nathan Beard is a multidisciplinary artist who draws from his Australian-Thai heritage to unpack the porous nature of culture and memory. In exploring associations of ‘Thainess’ through archives, family history and popular media, Beard’s work reveals the slippery range of influences which shape identity. Recent exhibition highlights include TarraWarra Biennial 2025: We Are Eagles, Tarra-Warra Museum of Art (2025),Ratana, sweet pea (2024), A Moment in Extended Crisis, UTS Gallery (2024) and A Puzzlement, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (2023) and Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (2022). In 2024 he was the recipient of the Debra Porch Award, and winner of the Darebin Art Prize. In 2022 he participated in the Creative Australia’s London residency at ACME studios, and was awarded a studio at Gertrude Contemporary (2023-25). Nathan is represented by sweet pea, Boorloo/Perth, and FUTURES, Naarm/Melbourne.

Neil Emmerson (b. 1956) is an Australian artist and printmaker whose work often features homoerotic elements. His practice addresses personal identity, as well as the experiences and politics of being a gay man, both in Western culture, as well as in China and East Asia. He studied painting at the Victorian College of the Arts from 1978 to 1980, and later completed a Masters of Fine Arts at Deakin University, Melbourne. Emmerson's work is collected in the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki, and he is featured in the 2012 book, *101 Contemporary Australian Artists*. Until 2021, Emmerson was a senior lecturer, and head of Dunedin School of Art's print studio. In 2006 he won the Fremantle Print Award.

Nell (b. 1975) is an Australian artist whose multidisciplinary practice crosses performance, sculpture, music, painting and immersive installation. Born in Maitland, NSW, Nell studied under Lindy Lee at Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney (1995), with Joan Jonas and John Baldessari at the University of California Los Angeles (1996) and with Annette Messager at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (2006). Nell’s work has been included in hundreds of exhibitions in Australia and abroad. Early in her exhibiting career, she was selected for *Primavera: Young Australian Artists* at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (1999), the annual curated exhibition of Australian artists aged under 35 years. Other significant exhibitions include: *Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art 2016: Magic Object*, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2016); *The National: New Australian Art*, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2017); and *Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now*, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2021). In 2016, Shepparton Art Museum presented an eponymously titled survey exhibition of Nell’s works, *NE/LL*. A monograph on her work, published by Thames and Hudson, was released in 2020.

Nick Breedon's (b.1987) sculptural practice weaves references from lived experience, pop culture, and art history into recursive narratives about intimacy, desire and alienation under late stage capitalism. Breedon incorporates a vast array of material processes and making techniques from craft, the western canon of sculpture; painting, textiles and video to make ritual-like objects which incorporate dark humour and extreme attention to detail. Breedon’s career includes solo exhibitions 'Public Art' (2023) at Firstdraft, (Gadigal/Sydney); ‘Feelings’ (2014), exhibited at West Space (Melb) and Firstdraft (Gadigal/Sydney); ‘Bongs and Commodores’, Alaska Projects (Gadigal/Sydney); ‘A Lot of Luck’, Bus Projects (Narrm/Melbourne); and ‘Sierpinski Mountain’, TCB (Narrm/Melbourne). Other highlights include large scale public realm works Let’s Get Metaphysical for Splendour in the Grass Festival in 2012, and large scale holographic artwork ‘Monotone Rainbow’ at Testing Grounds (Narrm/Melbourne) Nick is co-creator and co-host of the podcast Pro Prac in conjunction with artist Kiera Brew Kurec. Pro Prac is an interview style podcast speaking with artists about how they create a sustainable arts practice. Conceived as the talk behind the artist talk, the podcast covers under-represented subjects and facets within the arts including finances, mental health, sustainability, social expectations, privilege, productivity, acceptance and belonging. Nick’s work has been shortlisted for a number of prizes and awards including the 2024 Churchie Prize, 64th Blake Prize for neon work Let’s Get Metaphysical II, the 2015 Darebin Art Prize and the 2015 Wangaratta Contemporary Textiles Prize, and features in the collections of Artbank and City of Melbourne.

Nick Henderson is an art historian, curator and archivist at the National Film and Sound Archives. He is also a volunteer committee member, curator and archivist at the Australian Queer Archives (AQuA). Nick has worked as a curator and archivist across national and state cultural institutions for two decades, including the National Gallery of Australia, National Library of Australia, National Archives of Australia and the Australian Performing Arts Collection at the Arts Centre Melbourne.

Pat Brassington (b. 1942) is an influential Australian artist working in photo-media. With a career spanning four decades, Brassington has become well known for her incisive ability to infuse the familiar with the fantastic. Troubling what is revealed and what is hidden, her practice queers the photographic medium from a feminist perspective through interests in surrealism and psychoanalysis. A major survey exhibition, *Pat Brassington: A Rebours*, was held at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne in 2012 and toured Australia and New Zealand until 2014. Other selected solo exhibitions include *Pat Brassington*, Ten Cubed, Melbourne (2014); *In Search of the Marvellous*, CAST Gallery, Hobart (2013); a survey exhibition at the Lönnstrom Art Museum, Finland (2008); and *Pat Brassington*, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2007).

Paul Andrew (b. 1964) is a queer activist, artist researcher, senior media artist, video artist, zinester and artist curator with experience in social practice, site-generated ephemeral practice, creative archival assemblage and media art making using remix, bricolage and collage techniques. Andrew’s doctoral research project [QUT Creative Industries] addressed community-based approaches, scavenger methodologies, queer time, ARI temporalities and creative archival assemblage. These concepts and techniques are employed for making archival art initiatives in diverse varied and variable cultural forms. The artist has been practicing and exhibiting professionally since 1984. Paul has actively participated in artist-run communities of practice throughout the 1978 to Now period including: The Northside Creative Artist’s Association (Qld), Mervyn Moriarty School of Art, Brisbane School of Art (Qld), Artworker’s Union Queensland, Queensland Artworker’s Alliance (QAA), F. Art (Art Zine), That Contemporary Art Space, That Annexe, Axis Art Projects AU/USA (Art eXtremists International Syndicate), 2B: The Garage USA, [Bureau] Artspace, Breathing Concrete, Bitumen River Gallery, TAG (Tropical Artists Guild), First Draft, Sydney Super 8 Filmmakers, Sydney Intermedia Network (SIN), Queer TV, Metro Screen, DLux Media Arts, Epicormia Collective ‘The Reauthoring Impulse”, The Soylent Spot ARI, Next Door ARI, Tripla ARI/IT, Circadian Visions/AU. Since the 1970s the artist has continued to make queer conceptual film performances and art actions with family, friends, lovers, colleagues and strangers, often in an experimental Super 8mm film to HD video cultural form. Alongside their ongoing living archives internet artwork remix.org.au they are currently working on a reflective series of conceptual video art work installations titled: *Queer Life Writing 1964 to Now.*

Paul Knight (b.1976) is an artist primarily working in photography and weaving, who is most well known for his representations of intimacy. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) in photography at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2001 and an MFA at Glasgow School of Art in 2009. His work is held in numerous prominent public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, the Monash University Museum of Art, the Corrigan Collection, Sydney and the Bouwfonds Collection, Amsterdam. He is represented by Neon Parc. "For more than two decades, Knight has taken intimacy as his subject, considering its relationship to representation and the social designs that underpin its expression. This has led him, via an interest in science, to the potential role that intimacy plays in consciousness as an evolutionary line. Knight’s ongoing photographic project, 'Chamber Music', records the life he shares with his partner Peter. Since their meeting in 2009, the series has accumulated hundreds of glimpses into the domestic space of their relationship, with its images created through varying degrees of pre-meditation and chance; often the camera timer is set so that it simply captures what it sees. The photographs test the ability of this machine – the camera – and the prints it produces to capture and contain intimacy. The images hold human love, which Knight proposes might be our only positive legacy in a future in which machine intelligence carries on, bearing the mark of its creators, beyond humanity itself."

Paul Yore (b. 1988) works across installation, sound, video, collage, assemblage and textiles, often employing needlepoint, quilting, and appliqué techniques. Narratives of kitsch Australiana collide with sexually and politically loaded images, and popular culture reference to make up Yore’s uniquely garish, playful, provocative and politically astute works. His anarchic and anti-formalist approach to materials and content results in a visual cacophony of imagery and text that critiques the upheaval and dysfunction of contemporary society. Yore brashly and unapologetically re-centres radical and emancipatory queer expression against the backdrop of neoliberalism and the material excesses of capitalism. Yore has exhibited in major institutions across Australia and internationally, including in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, South Korea, the UK and USA. His work is held in various public and private collections, in Australia and internationally, including the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; Textile Art Museum, Ararat; Artbank, Australia; Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne; Art Gallery of Ballarat, VIC; Bendigo Art Gallery, VIC; Wangaratta Art Gallery; VIC; Buxton Contemporary, Melbourne; and Si Shang Art Museum, Beijing. Yore has been included in important international publications, including Phaidon’s *Vitamin T: Threads and Textiles in Contemporary Art* and Thames & Hudson’s *Threads: Contemporary Embroidered Art*. A significant survey exhibition, *Paul Yore: WORD MADE FLESH* was presented by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, in 2022, accompanied by a comprehensive artist monograph.

Peter Lyssiotis (b. 1949) is a Cypriot born-Australian teacher, writer, filmmaker and visual artist who emigrated to Australia in 1953. He completed a Bachelor of Arts in 1969 at La Trobe University and a Diploma in Education at Rusden College in 1973. In 2004 he received a commendation from the Anne Elder Award committee for his work. His small press books include *Industrial Woman* (with Vivienne Mehes and Jas H. Duke), *Journey of a Wise Electron* and *Other Stories, Three Cheers for Civilization and The Harbour Breathes* (with Anna Couani). His photographs and limited edition artist's books have been purchased by private collectors, libraries and galleries throughout Australia, the US, Switzerland, France, The Netherlands and Cyprus, including the National Gallery of Victoria, the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Peter Tully (1947–1992) was an artist, jeweller, costume designer, and gay community activist based in Sydney, Australia. As the inaugural artistic director (1982–86) of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, Tully made a significant contribution to Australian gay cultural expression and Sydney’s nightlife in the 1980s and '90s. Tully met fellow artist David McDiarmid in 1973. The two were lovers for two years and remained friends and collaborated on numerous projects until Tully's untimely death in 1992. His fashion output has been recognised in exhibitions such as *Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson: Flamingo Park and Bush Couture* (1985) at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. A Tully Australiana-themed necklace was featured on an Australian postage stamp in 1988. His iconic *New Age Business Suit* appeared in *Australian Fashion: The Contemporary Art* (1989–90), held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, and in Tokyo and Seoul. Collaborating with Ron Smith, he applied his skills in the design and fabrication of large-scale popular visual structures to the floats and costumes for ‘Expo ’88’ in Brisbane, and conceived installations for the traveling Australian Bicentenary Exhibition. A retrospective exhibition, *Peter Tully: Urban Tribalwear and Beyond*, was mounted at the National Gallery of Australia in 1991. His last exhibition was the June 1992 presentation of Australian artists at the Société de la Propriété Artistique et des Dessins et Modèles gallery, Paris. Tully's works are held in various museums and collections around Australia. Tully died of AIDS-related illness in Paris in 1992, at the age of 45.

Peter Waples-Crowe (b. 1965) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the intersection of an Indigenous queer identity, spirituality, and Australia’s ongoing colonisation. Influenced by his adoption and a later reconnection with his Ngarigo heritage, Waples-Crowe’s art comments on the world as a contested site for his multiple identities. Referencing many disparate ideas and themes, his work is auto-ethnographic by nature, and largely based on personal experiences. Works are held in the permanent collection of the Pride Centre Victoria, Melbourne; Australian Centre of the Moving Image, Melbourne; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; State Library of Victoria, Melbourne; Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ballarat; Moreland City Council, Melbourne; Manningham City Council, Melbourne; City of Darebin, Melbourne; Koorie Heritage Trust, Melbourne; University of Wollongong, Wollongong; and private collections in Australia, Taiwan, Canada, United States of America and England.