On Saturday the 24th of June 1978 the first ever Mardi Gras parade was held in Sydney; simultaneously at the Sydney Cricket Ground, a Rugby League match between Australia and New Zealand was played.
POOFTA is an exhibition that extends Callum McGrath’s ongoing body of work, which addresses his biographical relationship with binary representations of masculinity and queer male sexuality. The works centre around the idea of inheritance: the direct inheritance of family and the culturally-inherited history of queer identity. POOFTA ‘disidentifies’ both these histories as a way of understanding how queer identity is not static, instead negotiated through a complex web of social practices. Rugby League is central to the exhibition, as it has been to McGrath’s life. Based on research into McGrath’s patrilineal history of rugby, POOFTA explores the ambiguity of his relationship with the code and considers new means for articulating these contradictions. This is mediated by a series of screen-based explorations, inspired by the aesthetics of queer cinema and experimental video art.
McGrath’s practice is influenced by queer cultural history, with POOFTA specifically referencing the past work of British filmmaker Derek Jarman and Cuban-American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres. These queer practitioners are engaged with in this exhibition through a process of cultural inheritance. The work presented challenges the binary nature of queer representation by representing queerness on the screen in a constant state of flux. The works reflect a fraught relationship with these personal and collective pasts. POOFTA incites a dialogue about the importance and problems of cultural/lineal inheritance, creating screen spaces that speak to the complexities of identity and representation.
OPENING: 13 June 2018, 6pm
ARTIST TALK: 20 June 2018, 6pm
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body. This project is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
