Gaze of Our Lives

The solo exhibition at Lismore Regional Gallery will analyse the ingrained stereotypes of perceived LGBTQIA+ lives still perpetuated from and by mainstream news media.

After the recent Marriage Equality debates, the discussions regarding LGBTQIA+ children and teaching staff being expelled from religious schools because of their sexuality and the Israel Folau debacle, discrimination against the community never seems far from public discussion and media attention. This work explores the constant and continuous scrutiny focused on the LGBTQIA+ world.

News and media are littered with examples of homophobia, mistaken gay sexuality, gay stereotypes and perceived gay weakness.

Cinema often exacerbates these stereotypes with LGBTQIA+ people often depicted as murderers, paedophiles, and violent psychopaths, suffering from mental illness, desperate and destined to come to a bad ending.

When Scott Morrison talks of “family values” his words are coded to mean straight and acceptable, LGBTQIA+ families are inferior and false.

“Reservoir Dogs” is a 1992 American thriller written and directed b Quentin Tarantino in his feature-length debut. It involves a group of diamond thieves whose planned heist of a jewellery store goes terribly wrong. The film depicts the events before and after the heist. 

In a classic scene each thief is given an alias so as not to reveal their true name and identity to the others. The character played by Steve Buscemi is given the moniker Mr. Pink and complains about his name, implying it makes him look gay, feminine and by implication weak and ineffectual.

For the exhibition I intend, using the pseudonym Mr Pink, to reclaim sites of homophobic violence both physical and mental, much in the way the word “Queer” has been reclaimed from its negative connotations to act as ­an umbrella term for acceptance and difference.