Patches of Hope and Resistance
Spectrum Project Space, ECU Mount Lawley
29 Aug – 5 Sep, 2019
Patches of Hope and Resistance is a group exhibition curated by Gabby Loo and Gok-Lim Finch presented at Edith Cowan University’s Spectrum Project Space. This exhibition explores the personal trajectories towards decoloniality and environmentalism through dialogue that the curators and artists have with their peers. It is about the experience of the personal becoming political, the self in dialogue with others becoming aware of just and caring ways to be. It is about growing the good in oneself in the caring and kind ecologies of us.
Patches of Hope and Resistance included works from and with Colin Smith, Gabby Loo, Michelle Bui, Nadia Macaulay, Nazerul Khairy Ben-Dzulkefli, Patrick Bryce, Ruby Doneo, Stephanie Lai, Gok-Lim Finch (國令), Zheela Vokes and Richard Vokes. There will be ongoing residencies and works in the space, as well as workshops and discussion groups that focus on individual and community care as foundations for social change.
Be Nice 2 Friends of Colour: Drag 80’s Office Soiree
Medium: Printed drawings, readings, video projection, installation of assembled items, digital frame, chair, desk, clipboards, longyis and sheets.
Be Nice 2 Friends of Colour: Drag 80’s Office Soiree is a drag collaboration between Pat Bryce, Rhubarb Doneo, Gabby Loo, Colin Smith and Gok-Lim Finch. In this collaboration, the artists playfully invent selves inspired by 80’s office aesthetics and migration histories in WA. The artists aimed to carve out a self-determined space where they shared in ideas of evolving drag identities as a reclamation of body and self that are often racialised and othered in institutional spaces such as offices. Be Nice 2 Friends of Colour is an ongoing project facilitated by Gabby Loo, it has no strict physical expression. The project aims to support self-realisation, healing and pride for People of Colour creating collaboratively together.
Pat Bryce: “So what’s your hot take on drag?”
Rhubarb Doneo: “Drag is a way to get outside of myself and explore in a personal way, yet from a distance, myself and how I am connected to the people and systems around me. It is a way to process hostile aspects of the world that are hard to reconcile with my inner world and embodied sense of self.”
Gabby Loo: “lil’ drag
became big drag
family drag
some kind of drag
a space to feel inside and out
find more parts of a whole
who knew i could be more?
i think i did
(the prescribed did not)”
Colin Smith: “Drag can be the emulation, simulation or performance of another mode of being separate from or as an extension of your own. It’s a creation of an identity illusion that blurs the lines between parody and assimilation. Drag can also be used as a tool to navigate and make light of difficult situations in order to protect one’s naked identities.”
Gok-Lim Finch: “I think that drag is being free to take the possibilities of self, and cast them aside - that drag is a way to tether yourself to the sky of what will become.”