You Are Here Too

You Are Here Too curated by Kink

Institute of Modern Art, Meanjin/Brisbane 12 April–29 June 2025

You Are Here Too features contemporary queer Australian artists whose works engage with queer desire and sex. Presented on the IMA’s 50th anniversary, it is, in part, a response to the 1992 IMA exhibition You Are Here curated by Scott Redford and Luke Roberts under their collaborative moniker AGLASSOFWATER. The first exhibition in Australia to feature all gay artists at the height of the AIDS crisis, it included works by Hong Kong–born Hiram To, Melbourne-based Lebanese-American artist Bashir Baraki, and the Chilean-Australian artist Juan Davila, as well as Brent Harris, David McDiarmid, Leonard Brown, Mathew Jones, Peter Cooley, Peter Tully, Ross Wallace, and the curators Redford and Roberts. 

Addressing shifts between that historical moment of the early 1990s and the field of LGBTQI+ practice today, You Are Here Too features works that present queer fucking and desire as amorphous, fluid, temporal, retreating, explicit, abstracted, and political. Across new and existing works, the show explores how queer sex and desire are being imaged, embodied, and expressed by artists today, beyond the scope of the original exhibition. As such, You Are Here Too relates crucially to First Nations and trans experience, while also presenting queerness as pluralistic and divergent, reflecting the multiple perspectives of both the artists and curators within broader queer communities. Uniting the artists is an appreciation that queerness’ radical potential is immanent: it is always there, but its visibility is historically and socially contingent.

Yangamini (‘holes’ in Tiwi) is a guerrilla collective founded in 2022 by Tiwi-Warlpiri sistergirl elder Crystal Love Johnson Kerinauiai under the memorable tagline of @black.holes.matter. In Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTQ+ cultures, sistergirls are gender diverse individuals with a female spirit, who take on roles as sisters, mothers, and grandmothers in their communities. First Nations traditions of gender diversity were violently repressed by the binary logics of colonisation. Crystal Love has written that, ‘since the missionaries came, they brought new prejudices and new judgments ... They tried to wipe out our culture and our beliefs. The white man’s religion changed the way our people think’ [1]. In recent decades, sistergirls and brotherboys across the continent have gained international recognition in the fight for transgender rights, promoting visibility and acceptance through protests, documentaries, fashion labels, parades, community initiatives, litigation, activism, and art.

For the 2024 Sydney Biennale, Yangamini created a series of giant butt plugs made of materials collected on Country, including ochre, termite mounds, casuarina, paperbark, and cycad palm. The works took aim at Santos’ Barossa Gas Project, a $5.8 bn, 263 km pipeline, intended to run from Darwin through the sacred marine environments of the Tiwi Islands to the Barossa Gas Fields under the Timor Sea. ‘We decided to teach them a lost Aboriginal tradition to market their own fart’, Yangamini explained. ‘They can use our one-size-fits-all butt plug to stop the leak and store more fortune’ [2].

The idea came after attending a protest against Santos in Darwin. That night, Crystal and Johnita shared a dream of the Evil Ass spirit. ‘When the spirit talks’, they said, ‘bad gas comes from the ring hole of its mouth. Mouth like a bum hole … this gas gets passed through the belly out the ass of one human … onto the next. This is how Evil Ass dreaming infects our people both mentally and physically’ [3]. They mounted their Crucifix Buttplug from the Post-Missionary Culture of Shame and Bribery, Sexual Violence and Privatised Kilinjini (Swamp) on their Mardi Gras Float and paraded down the streets of Sydney. This gigantic paperbark construction, with arms like a cross, also appears as one of the main protagonists in Yangamini’s 2024 video Mapurtiti Nonga: Evil Ass Dreaming in You Are Here Too.

In January 2024, the Federal Court gave the green light for Santos to resume work on the Barossa Gas Project, quashing the Tiwi community’s most recent attempt to litigate against the global energy giant. Since its inception in 2004, Santos’ project has been staunchly opposed as an ecological and spiritual destruction of Country. Justice Natalie Chesworth found that the pipeline construction would have a ‘negligible chance’ of significant impact to ‘tangible cultural heritage’, overturning evidence of the ongoing significance of the area to First Nations peoples across thousands of years [4]. On completion, the Barossa Gas Project is expected to be the most carbon-intensive gas development in Australia.  

For You Are Here Too, Yangamini have created a new series of smaller, more intimate butt plugs, crafted from mangrove roots, feathers, clay, ochre, and other organic materials gathered on Country, as well as a wall-mounted kujuka fashioned from worm-eaten mangrove and intricately painted. In the gallery, they stand together as a diverse community of care and resistance—forms for asserting sovereignty and healing Country (as Crystal often says, ‘every hole has a soul’), while protesting the white, possessive colonial extractivism that is literally fucking everyone’s land.

In an exhibition rooted in queer history and culture, Alexis Kanatsios might at first appear an outlier. Some will be quick to make links to the formal legacies of 1980s and 1990s queer Australian art and this is not by coincidence. However, in a distinction from that period, Kanatsios’s work retreats from explicit queer coding and instead plays with what is expected from a ‘queer artist’. Sharing the space with Kanatsios is Gian Manik. The pairing shares what they don’t have in common. Manik’s recent figurative oil paintings are intent on depicting gay sexuality with all its libidinal and historical desire. They are fantastical imaginations of art history into the present. Kanatsios, by contrast, withdraws from any figurative gay associations while remaining formally embedded within queer art history. 

Kanatsios’s new work in You Are Here Too developed from his 2023 exhibitions Sex with Men at TCB Gallery and Temperament at Asbestos, both in Naarm/Melbourne. As with those projects, Kanatsios leaves the viewer with no depictions of sex or gay desire, only hints and scratches. In place of a suggestive title, Kanatsios lets the curators do the legwork for him. It is through the exhibition-making that his work submits to associations with queer art history, desire and violence. 

Influenced by Michel Houellebecq’s novel The Map and the Territory (2010), Kanatsios understands the role of the artist as an aggregator, submitting to information that already exists. Their cylindrical drawings—depicting architectural interiors, coloured patterns, and numbers—become vehicles for organising data. Occasionally, partially recognisable pencilled figures appear. There is an ambiguity in the way information is processed and consumed. While the receding curves of the cylinders partially conceal the completed image, viewers can project their own meanings. This is further fleshed out through the presentation of the Submission Drawings, originally exhibited in the Temperament exhibition. The imagery—architectural spaces, texts, and graphics—suggest a relationship to the artist’s broader life experience. In this context, the artist questions how or what a ‘queer artwork’ is meant to perform. 

Kanatsios’s work finds itself at home in the legacies of You Are Here and its participating artists. The tensions between figuration and abstraction can be seen in works by Leonard Brown, Brent Harris, and, at a pinch, even the interior in Juan Davila’s Interior with Built Bar (1992) featured in You Are Here. Scott Redford, however, remains the most astute point of contact, and a number of his early sculpture paintings like Phenomena (Sheltered and Withheld) (1989–90), Painting with Vaseline and Dulux (1990) and Hidden (1990)—all of which can be seen in his 1996 publication Surf or Die—resonate with Kanatsios’s work. They share a type of charged sexual ambiguity and violence. In You Are Here Too, Redford is represented with one of his early minimalist urinal photographs Urinal (Fortitude Valley 8), taken around the corner from the IMA in 2001.

Kanatsios’s Substitutor (Behaviour d1 & d2) (2023) presents two skimboards—skimboard or die?—with intensely scratched surfaces that precariously balance in an in-between state. The artist suggests that they may have been found in motion. Redisplayed in this way, like much of Redford’s work from the aforementioned period, a semiotic shift occurs. The boards become open to new meaning. In conversations in the lead-up to this exhibition, Kanatsios suggested we read Dennis Cooper’s The Sluts (2004) and Pierre Guyotat’s Eden, Eden, Eden (1970), which explore how form (in this context, that of the book itself) can push the affective qualities of image through the structuring of language. While Substitutor might not have a didactic relationship to this text, the openness of the marked surfaces does elicit or resonate with the charged sexual violence and fantasy in the novel.  

Nick Breedon presents three propositions for public art that engage the speculative world of trans fantasy, reminding us of the dark violence of cissexism and heteronormativity and of the potential for an empowering liberation from the status quo. The sculptures are presented through the material logic of a municipal council, with utilitarian Besser block plinths and didactic plaques that communicate to a broad audience. For Breedon, there is an ethic in this overall strategy: fighting cissexism is good for everyone—there is no hidden agenda here. The three sculptures are also a way for Breedon to grapple with trans representation and experience beyond essentialist modes and images. While conservative news media popularly conceive transness as a contagion and legal regimes violently prohibit transgender people’s access to gender affirmation, Breedon’s sculptures are hopeful, offering an alternative world where trans people and their allies tackle very real setbacks.  

In Vaccines Made Me Gay (2020–2), Breedon engages the conspiracy theories that correlate vaccinations with everything from autism to homosexuality and probably alien abduction. This fragmented representation of a torso—a bronze cast t-shirt with a protruding rib cage—evokes the body eroded from the slow violence of technocratic control. Tara Heffernan notes that Breedon deploys ‘humour to troll the anti-authoritarian, homophobic reactionary stances’ [5]. In the exhibition context of You Are Here Too, they resonate with the fraught moral judgement, bigotry, and suspicion associated with right-wing state actors and Big Pharma in the emergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. 

Fantasy Sword (2022–3) is cast from smelted love locks. These padlocks were attached to bridges and other municipal architecture to publicly proclaim enduring love, a distance away from the risky, unstable, and perhaps experimental ground of trans and queer relations. Breedon replaces one act of vandalism with another, cutting down the locks and recreating them as a sword that is modelled both from a camp toy and from objects with more sensual protuberances. Breedon refers to the sword as an ‘enchanted ritual object’ that functions through its symbolic form to defend queer libidinal relations and to ward off TERFS [6].  

Woah I’m Kind of Hyper (2022–3) looks like an assemblage of aluminium cans but is in fact a painstakingly turned aluminium rod that has been etched to construct a caricature of a sci-fi raygun, perhaps for a trans militia. The form itself riffs off various aspects of niche internet culture, tumblr informed DIY crafternoons and humorous memes linking Monster Ultra with trans people—especially trans women—programmers. The energy drinks emblazoned with the colours of the trans pride flag might be a laughable (and preposterous) illustration of the offensive grooming fantasies made by conservatives regarding turning children trans or just another cynical marketing campaign to capture (and reduce) a diverse community.

Holly Bates transitioned to filmmaking out of frustration with the representation of sex work in mainstream media. Her short film, House of Whoreship (2022), tells the story of two queer sex workers who are navigating their shared workspace after recently ending their romantic relationship. This impressive graduating film presents queer sex and desire with a realness that is wholly relatable regardless of the viewer's gender, sexuality, or profession. The film presents a straight-up view of the realities of the brothel, including client relationships, menstruation navigation, and trying to avoid your ex as you navigate your shift. A film about sex work where there is no sex. In You Are Here Too, Bates's contribution stands out for exploring queerness beyond explicit desire, delving into the intimate aftermath of connection—the tender bruising of professional proximity after personal heartbreak. The two female-presenting protagonists navigate the cramped hallways of their workplace like a choreographed dance—ducking and weaving as clients come and go, avoiding one another, until a stuck menstrual sponge forces a reluctant confrontation.

What feels most refreshing about Bates's approach is her refusal to trade in the expected tropes. There are no traumatic backstories, scenes of rescue or redemption, or moralising undertones. Instead, we get the comforting banality of workplace protocol and the uncomfortable familiarity of trying to maintain professional boundaries with someone who has seen you naked in both professional and personal contexts. The film finds its rhythm in these moments of tension—a halting realisation of an empty prescription bottle, an awkward front-counter exchange, and the subtle positioning of bodies to avoid unnecessary contact in the break space. The brothel itself becomes a character. Its narrow corridors, communal areas, and private rooms create a spatial tension that mirrors the protagonists' emotional landscapes. The constant intercom announcements, shared makeup station, and industrial quantities of towels are loaded with narrative weight. Sex work is neither glamorised nor sanitised. It is simply presented as labour, requiring both emotional and physical management.

House of Whoreship presents an understated approach to both queerness and sex work. By focusing on the universality of workplace awkwardness and post-relationship navigation, Bates makes a powerful statement about representation. Her characters exist as whole human beings navigating the complexities of their professional and personal lives, not as tokens or archetypes. In giving us a film where the sex work happens entirely off-screen, Bates redirects our attention to what we rarely see—the authentic, unglamorous reality of work environments where boundaries between the personal and professional inevitably blur. And sometimes, when the emotional weight threatens to overwhelm, there's always that bossy co-worker trying to get shit done to break the tension.

Recalling in spirit the famous image-map of the German art historian Aby Warburg, painter Gian Manik’s small constellation of finely executed oil paintings could be mistaken for the work of an academician. However, Manik’s subject matter detours indiscriminately from the approved subjects of the Salon. The artist’s eye is feverish: flitting across time scales, media, cultures, bringing together a visual library of queer sex and desire from his bowerbird-like personal memory. He studies these images ‘in order to understand and love myself. Education is the key to acceptance’ [7].

The sources are disparate but linked by their horniness. Two men in a moment of seduction under dappled light; a photograph from a circuit party; the buff torsos of French Foreign Legion troops; a semi-naked Saint John the Baptist, the only disciple Jesus loved; a close up of hands intertwined; a tight crop of Adam holding a fig leaf over his dick; two Roman soldiers about to make out; and, smallest of all, a black-and-white image of American pornographic/art house film director, actor, escort, publisher, sex club owner and gardener Fred Halstead [8]. Manik describes these images as ‘identity markers’ [9]. They are points of relation, linking together the development of his being across time, drawn up from the vast depths of contemporary image libraries.

Each of these linens demonstrates a deep and genuine devotion towards queer archives and histories. Firstly, through their act of communion with individual subjects, reflected in Manik’s exacting painterly reproduction of small, quotidian, and yet personally profound moments from across visual culture. Secondly, in the way they recall the purpose of devotional painting as a genre itself. Traditionally images for private worship, here the typical subject of such paintings are subverted, as are their display. Out in public, Manik prays flagrantly at the altar of queer desire. And thirdly, in his framing of this body of images in its entirety as ‘an agent of community’ in itself. An agent of education, Manik sees the ‘legacies archives like these carry for not only artistic queer voices but the expanded community as invaluable and something to be celebrated’ [10].

Rather than simply antagonistic toward religion, with its heavy history with queer communities—and offering an intriguing resonance with Luke Roberts’s Estocada (Auto da Fe) (c.1991) also in You Are Here Too—Manik carries out one final act of appropriation. He too believes in a higher power. But it ain’t God, the state, or an ideology, but the power of a different kind of revelation: seeing representations of others just like you, living, loving, desiring, fucking, and, through them, learning that you too belong.

You Are Here Too is accompanied by a live performance program at the IMA featuring Raw Honey aka Leen Rieth and Crystal Love (April 11) and Tay Haggarty and Ari Angkasa (May 9).

1. Crystal Love, cited in “Napanangka: The True Power of Being Proud”, in Dino Hodge (ed.), Colouring the Rainbow: Blak, Queer and Trans Perspectives Life Stories and Essays by First Nations Peoples of Australia, Wakefield Press: South Australia, 2015, p. 28.

2. Jens “Johnita” Cheung with Crystal Love Johnston Kerinauia and Nadine Purranika Lee, “Mapurtiti Nonga/Evil Arse Dreaming What are the butt plugs made of?”, Artlink, 44.1 (April 2024), p. 41.

3. Jens “Johnita” Cheung with Crystal Love Johnston Kerinauia and Nadine Purranika Lee, “Mapurtiti Nonga/Evil Arse Dreaming”, Artlink, p. 41.

4. Lisa Cox, “Santos’s $5.8bn Barossa gas pipeline project can go ahead after Tiwi Islanders lose court battle”, The Guardian, 16 Jan 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/jan/15/santos-barossa-gas-pipeline-project-tiwi-islander-court-battle-heritage-claim

5. Tara Heffernan, Public Art, exh. cat, Firstdraft: Sydney, 2023.

6. Nick Breedon, conversation with Spiros Panigirakis, February 2025.

7. Gian Manik, correspondence with Tim Riley Walsh, 12 March 2025.

8. In order: Stranger by the Lake, dir. Alain Guiraudie, 2013; Chris Johnson, “Dance parties: End of summer fun or monkeypox super-spreaders?,” Washington Blade, 24 August 2022; Beau Travail, dir. Claire Denis, 1999; Caravaggio, Saint John the Baptist, 1604–1606; Priest, dir. Antonia Bird, 1994; Jan van Eyck, The Ghent Altarpiece/Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, 1432; Sebastiane, dir. Derek Jarman, 1976; source unstated.

9. Gian Manik, correspondence with Tim Riley Walsh, 12 March 2025.

10. Gian Manik, correspondence with Tim Riley Walsh, 12 March 2025.