With and Without You

When:	Oct 2, 2002  -  Nov 9, 2002
Curated by:	Royce Smith
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Ivan Dougherty Gallery and Sydney 2002 Gay Games present an exhibition of American, Asian and Australian artists working in a variety of media, whose practice considers the impact of AIDS on contemporary culture and society. The exhibition is a necessary and timely engagement with recent and historic explorations of AIDS. Artists in this exhibition have produced works that explore both the burden of socio-cultural responsibility for this devastating disease that still has no cure, and the task of understanding AIDS now.

Many of the 25 artists in the exhibition are from the United States and working in photo-based media. Some are relatively unknown outside the US, others, such as Andres Serrano, have international reputations for making work that is confronting and controversial. Of the Australian artists, David McDiarmid's AIDS Council posters and Scott Redford's installation are visually and politically uncompromising in their depiction of contemporary gay community concerns.

"Once again, artists have endeavoured to expose the bitter realities concealed by misrepresentations of AIDS, the ravages it has wrought on people living with AIDS, together with the weight of grief from personal and collective loss amongst gay communities, parents and children. In so doing, they have revealed that the great danger lies not within the 'Sexed body', but in those cultures which persist in projecting their phobia of pollution upon it." (Fay Brauer, introduction to With and Without You exhibition catalogue).

This exhibition re-visits, in a contemporary context, many of the issues addressed in the seminal exhibition about AIDS in this country, Don't Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS, curated by Ted Gott in 1994 for the National Gallery of Australia. According to Ivan Dougherty Gallery Director, Nick Waterlow, "It is a poignant moment, at the time of the Sydney 2002 Gay Games VI, to look at the work of these artists who shed, from central positions of engagement, invaluable individual and collective insight on the subject."

This exhibition is presented in association with the Sydney 2002 Gay Games VI Sport and Cultural Festival, Sydney, 25 October - 9 November. It is curated by Royce W. Smith, International Postgraduate Research Fellow, School of English, Media Studies and Art History, University of Queensland.

Public Programs

Forum

Date:  Nov 8, 2002

Time: 5:30pm - 8:30pm

Details:
Professor Liz Ashburn - Chair Liz Ashburn is a Professor in the School of Art, UNSW COFA and will serve as Chair of the forum panel. Professor Ashburn is politically active in the gay, lesbian and queer community and has won GOLD in the Sydney 2002 Gay Games in the over 60s body building section. Bronwyn Bancroft Bronwyn Bancroft lives and works in Balmain and has contributed key works to With and Without You: the Everybody's Business series of paintings commissioned by the Commonwealth Government in the early 1990s. Bancroft's take on the AIDS pandemic was a key turning point in Australia's dealing with the virus, as her paintings reminded viewers how people living with HIV/AIDS are our brothers, fathers, mothers, children, neighbours. Bancroft will speak about the climate in which her works were produced and her views as to how Australia's handling of HIV/AIDS has changed over the past decade. Dr Fay Brauer Dr Fay Brauer is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Art History & Theory, UNSW COFA. Her essay in the exhibition catalogue is part of research for her books, Regenerating the Body and Building the Body Beautiful. In this essay she has linked 18th and 19th century fears of syphilis with the ongoing demonisation of individuals who live with HIV/AIDS. Dr Brauer will speak about these linkages and the ways in which art has highlighted these connections. Scott Redford Scott Redford is a Queensland artist whose career spans over two decades. His work is diverse, ranging from installation and painting to assemblage and photography. Redford will speak about his own work and the reasons why HIV/AIDS have influenced it, but will also look at broader questions including the "place" of AIDS-related art within gallery space and the ways in which Australia's first major AIDS-related exhibition, Don't Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS, has affected the receiving of subsequent shows dealing with AIDS. Royce W. Smith Royce Smith is curator of With and Without You and International Postgraduate Research Fellow at the University of Queensland, Brisbane. He will speak about the two-year process of compiling the exhibition and the ways in which HIV/AIDS are perceived within the gallery. He will also speak about this exhibition's placement in terms of other HIV/AIDS-related exhibitions in Australia and overseas. Joseph Stabilito Joe Stabilito lives and works in New York City and specialises in painting and assemblage. His Untitled piece in With and Without You is a revisitation of the process of painting, combining gestural work with the power of everyday objects attached to the canvas. Stabilito will speak about his practice and the effect that perceptions of HIV/AIDS have made upon it.