The Unflinching Gaze
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery brings together Australian and international artists, writers and collectors for a world-class major photographic exhibition that explores the depiction of the male figure.
The Unflinching Gaze: photo media & the male figure exhibition includes two hundred photos and videos by 62 leading artists (24 Australian and 38 international) will be exhibited at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) from Saturday 14 October until Sunday 3 December 2017.
Curated by BRAG Director Richard Perram OAM, the exhibition surveys how the male figure has been depicted by Australian and international artists in photo media over the last 140 years. It includes historic and contemporary fine art photography and film, fashion photography, pop videos and homoerotic art.
This is the first major Australian photo media exhibition in which the vast majority of artists identify as LGBTI. Key artists in the exhibition include iconic American artists Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, and avant-garde theatre director Robert Wilson with a video portrait of Brad Pitt; European artists such as Eadweard Muybridge, and Baron Wilhelm Von Gloeden; and historic and contemporary Australian artists including Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss, Max Dupain, Deborah Kelly, William Yang, Gary Carsley, Owen Leong and Liam Benson. Works have been sourced from Australian and international collections, including a major loan of 64 works from the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay & Lesbian Art, New York.
“The Unflinching Gaze exhibition is a unique opportunity for audiences in the Bathurst Region to access a world class photo-media exhibition”, says Richard Perram OAM. “The Unflinching Gaze not only deals with aesthetic concerns but also engages the community in a discussion around social issues”.
Alongside the photographs and films, carefully selected words of authors and poets including Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde and Constantine P. Cavafy will be featured throughout the exhibition. It promises to be an immersive journey that explores the history of the male figure in photography, as well as the personal perspectives and literature that accompany it.
Opening this Saturday, 14 October the exhibition will be joined by a day of celebrations including: a Forum from 10am to 4pm; an Official Opening from 6pm to 8pm; and a post-opening LGBTQI-friendly community celebration Walk on the Wilde Side at the Carrington in Keppel Street from 8pm to 1am.
BRAG, in conjunction with the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), will be holding two symposia in conjunction with The Unflinching Gaze. Both will be open to the general public with the first being held in Bathurst on Saturday, 14 October and the second in Sydney on Wednesday, 18 October.
The forums will include both Australian and international artists, writers and collectors including Clare Barlow from the Tate Britain in London, Polish curator and academic Pawel Leskowicz, Brandan Wallace from the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay & Lesbian Art in New York and Bill Zewadski, a collector of male nude photography and a philanthropist from Tampa Florida.
Following the opening BRAG in conjunction with WAGALS (Western Area Gay & Lesbian Society) and the Carrington Function and Reception Centre will present Walk on the Wilde Side a post-opening LGBTIQ-friendly party at the Carrington (99 Keppel Street) from 8 pm to 1 am. The party will feature Bathurst’s very-own drag stars Venom Vipers performing Pussy Cat Dolls and Lady Gaga and a Sydney based DJ spinning all your favourite “gay” hits…think Priscilla.
BRAG is working with local LGBTI Bathurst community groups including WAGALS (Western Area Gay and Lesbian Society), headspace Bathurst and the AIDS Council to ensure that one of the most important outcomes of The Unflinching Gaze: photo media and the male figure will be strategies that inform and educate the Bathurst general community and support and affirm the Bathurst LGBTI community.
EXHIBITION
The Unflinching Gaze: photo media & the male figure
Opening Saturday 14 October until 3 December 2017
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery
FORUMS
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, Saturday 14 October
University of Technology Sydney, Wednesday 18 October
Courtesy Bathurst Regional Art Gallery and the artists.
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