Art Insider is an interview segment with fascinating figures of the art field who lift the veil on their corner of contemporary art, hosted by Joana P. R. Neves.
Guests: curators Gemma Rolls-Bentley and E-J Scott
We talk about their exhibition "Talisman" focusing on objects whose symbolic and energetic force infuse a sense of safety and protection, but also of resistance in queer lives.
Presented by Cardion Arts in Collaboration with The Museum of Transology.
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https://cardionarts.org/2025-exhibition-talisman: Group exhibition of LGBTQIA+ artists from all over the UK.
Most of the artworks in the exhibition are for sale, and provide funds for AKT, the UK’s only charity dedicated to supporting LGBTQ+ young people facing homelessness (contact@cardionarts.org).
Key Themes Explored in This Episode: The importance of inclusivity. Trans rights. Trans guidance. LGBTQIA+ art and artists. Queering the museum. Curating as an LBBTQIA+ person. Recentering female queer and trans narratives.Major Themes: Curating, Queer art, Museum Communication Strategies and Failures, Queer narratives, LGBTQIA+ art visibility, Lesbian histories, Trans histories, Audience Engagement, How to Engage with inclusivity. Art and activist. Non profit art organisations. Curating. Museums and heritage. New forms of curating. Exhibitions as safe spaces explores the importance of contemporary art spaces, museums and galeries for the LGBTQIA+ community.
For behind the scenes clips, links to the artists and guests we cover, and visuals of the exhibitions we discuss follow us on Instagram: @exhibitionistas_podcastBluesky: @exhibitionistas.bsky.socialexhibitionistaspod@gmail.com
About us: Exhibitionistas is an independent podcast created and hosted by contemporary art curator and writer Joana P. R. Neves. www.exhibitionistaspodcast.com
#contemporaryart #lgbtqia #exhibitionistas #exhibitionistaspodcast #joanaprneves #gemmarollsbentley #ejscott #museumoftransology #cardionarts #talisman
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I love these episodes where I don't do much.
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My guests today are so incredibly professional and
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articulate, poetic and determined that I just had to
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ask a simple question. And a string of insightful
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stories ensued, along with illuminating trans, lesbian,
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queer, and feminist curating framings.
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Stick around to the end because I assure you, you will come out
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of this episode more affirmed or more informed at the very least.
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So welcome to the very first special summer episode of
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Exhibitionist. There will be lots of endearing,
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hilarious and courageous stories for you, unveiling queer lives
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in detail and with a tenderness often missing when talking about
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homosexuality and particularly currently trans people.
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Interviewing EJ Scott about his exhibitions through the lens of
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his trans life and values within the heritage and museum
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institution was powerful. On the other hand, the
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incredible work ethic of Gemma Roles Bentley will give you a
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real insight into curating from a lesbian queer perspective.
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We're all enriched by these stories, and thus she have
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incredible anecdotes about queer lives from the past and also
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from today. Learning about the exhibition
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that brought us here will perfectly illustrate such
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framings and how they can be useful and exciting and
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empowering. The exhibition is called
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Talisman and is centered around the notion of safety and
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resistance through magical powerful objects that keep us
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safe, strong and resilient. There are lots of references in
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this episode which I will include in the newsletter.
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So sign up, follow us on Instagram and don't forget to
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leave us a rating to donate or to become a member through Sub
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Stack or our website exhibitionistpodcast.com.
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And now on with the episode. Enjoy.
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I am Joanna PR Nevesh, Contemporary art curator and
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writer, and this is exhibition Esters, the podcast where we
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explore art from all angles, stubbornly embracing creativity
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in its iridescent complexity. This is an Art Insider episode
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where I interview fascinating figures of the field, and today
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is no exception. I have the honor of having here
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with me two guests, Gemma Ross Bentley and EJ Scott.
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They Co curated the exhibition Talisman, assisted by assistant
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curator Katie Dellavali and which was extended until the
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10th of August. So you have time to go plenty of
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time. It's in London on Park Street,
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right next to the Blavatnik Building entrance of Tate
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Modern. You'll find all the information
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in the shows notes. So please go there and you can
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also, while you're there, sign up for the newsletter.
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So Gemma and EJ, thank you so much for being here.
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Welcome to exhibition Esters. Thanks for having us.
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It's a pleasure, so I'll briefly introduce you very quickly.
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The embarrassing moment and then we'll move on to accounts, which
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is the pleasure of listening to your answers.
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So Gemma Roles Bentley is a curator, writer and creative
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consultant with a career spanning 2 decades.
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She has a multifaceted approach to the field and she champions
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and supports diversity, particularly female and queer
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artists. With a mission to create more
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space for L GB, TIQ, A+ Voices and creative endeavours.
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She is the author of the magnificent book that You Must
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Purchase If You Don't Have Queer Art, From Canvas to Club and The
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Spaces Between, whose title reflects the width of her
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perspectives on art practices and their spaces.
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She is in the Leslie Lohman Museum Acquisitions Board and
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she sits on the Koto Association Committee.
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She's curated too many exhibitions and done too many
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projects to list here, but I would highlight the Brighton
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Beacon Collection, which is the largest permanent display of
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queer art in the UK. And it includes artists such as
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David Hockney, Isaac Julian, who wrote the forewords for her book
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By the Way, Catherine OP, Elm Green and Draxett, Prem Sahib,
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Sunil Gupta Sinwakin and Maggie Hambling, who's recently
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unveiled a new blue plaque which I discovered in Gemma's
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Instagram accounts for Gemma. Do you want to tell us what
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happened? What was that blue plaque?
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Sure, it was a yeah. It was a really iconic moment.
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I felt very lucky to be there. Maggie was invited to unveil a
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blue plaque for the Gateways Club, which was the first
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lesbian club in the UK. It essentially was a space for
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lesbians from around 1945 to 1985, and there are many, many,
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many wild stories from that place.
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It's a basement bar in Chelsea, just a very unassuming door on
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the street. I've heard many stories,
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especially since I posted that reel involving Maggie herself,
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which she was horrified to hear when I saw her on Wednesday and
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told her that. And yes, they invited English
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Heritage, who are responsible for putting the blue plaques up.
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Have a really brilliant working group led by Amy Lemay, and
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they're committed to marking more LGBTQIA plus sites around
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the UK and the Gateways Club got a blue plaque above the door
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finally. And apparently it's the first
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blue plaque that says lesbians plural on it.
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Yeah. I mean, it started.
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It actually started the guy who took over the lease for the bar
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according to the stories which I believe are true, his grandson,
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I think it was his grandson or his great nephew was presenting
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on the day too. Apparently he he won the deeds
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for this bar in a boxing bet that he did very well out of.
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And I think so that he actually took over in like the 30s, late
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30s. And then his wife, who Maggie
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calls Queen Gina, ran the bar with her friend Smithy, who was
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a lesbian from the American Air Force.
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There's a really great documentary that's a it's free
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on iPlayer at the moment called Gateways Grind about the club.
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It's like an hour long and it's really good.
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And Maggie's in that too. But yeah, the these two women
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ran the bar, a Butch and a femme, well, lesbian presenting
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women. According to this documentary,
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everybody assumed they were a couple.
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But that Gina's daughter says that she asked her mum on her
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deathbed were you and Smithy ever, you know, and she said no,
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no, we weren't. But it wasn't because of me, it
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was because of Smithy. So I presume it's because there
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was a husband and Smithy wanted to be honourable.
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But they ran this bar for decades.
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I mean the stories. It's a great story.
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It's a really good job someone made a made a film.
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Oh my God. Gateways grind.
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Gateways grind on. I OK a must watch.
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OK amazing. Just need to highlight another
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project of yours. Gemma.
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By the way who which is open now and will be open until December
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at Walterton. It's a two person exhibition
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with Maggie, Maggie Hambling and Roy Robertson.
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So EJ Scott is a curator, cultural producer and academic
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senior lecturer in culture criticism and curation at
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Central St. Martin's.
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EJ's curating and projects recenter histories of alienated
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others and marginalized communities.
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I would highlight the West Yorkshire Queer Stories
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projects, which was organized in partnership with MESMAC, Leeds
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City Museum and West Yorkshire Archives National Science and
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Media Museum. But more importantly, EJ is the
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founder of an absolutely incredible and innovative
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project called the Museum of Transology, which is the UK's
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most significant collection of objects representing trans, non
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binary and intersex people's lives.
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And this year the Museum of Transology celebrates its 10th
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anniversary. And we'll, we'll talk about all
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this in a bit. Just to finish EJ's very short
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biography and again, really, really succinct as much.
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There would be much more to say. EJ was awarded the UK's Activist
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Museum Award of 20/20/21 by the Research Center for Museums and
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Galleries. And he co-authored the Trans
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inclusive culture guidance for museums, galleries, archives and
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heritage organizations with and that includes 11 museums across
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the UK, namely the national trusts, which is incredible
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amazing. So do you want to tell us a
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little bit about that project because it seems that it is in
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very fresh in in the works? The the thanks for having me.
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The Trans Inclusive Culture guidance really responded to a
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very specific point in time. It was produced by the Research
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Center for Museums and Galleries out of the University of
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Leicester. And increasingly the research
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centre was, you know, RCMG was getting enquiries from, from
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people they'd worked with before and members working actively
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within the sector about how to navigate their institutional
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values surrounding trans inclusion.
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At a time that was becoming increasingly fraught in the UK
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with the government and the and National Health Service, our
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university sector, the Office for Students, the EHRC pushing
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for trans exclusion, if you like, the museum and heritage
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sector in the UK plays a very, very important role in
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disseminating our social values. You know, it's very much where
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you find out where, where you belong in society and who you
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are and how you got here and why.
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So we've got a really strong sector when it comes to
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inclusivity. And so out of those inquiries
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and, and in combination with the difficulties I was facing
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working on a project, I was of curated queer and now at TAT for
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a number of iterations. And up to 10 people come on
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one day and there's 100 others and speakers, etcetera.
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Well, just a couple of weeks before it, we sort of went into
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full production. There was a protest against Drag
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Story time, people saying that it wasn't suitable for the
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children and queer families to have access to storytelling
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within the gallery. And there was a protest outside
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Take Britain. You know, it's got the
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neoclassical stairs, it's really iconic sort of looking building
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in our cultural sector. And right up the middle of the
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stairs where the police and on one side where the left in
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support of of of the activities and on on the other side with
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the far right. What we were seeing right in
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front of our eyes in this physical manifestation was also
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what we were seeing in the cultural sector.
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So and. This was in 2023.
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Yes. So our, our first iteration of
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the, we worked at a rate of not a project like this would
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normally take us a couple of years to turn around.
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We turned around the guidance within six months, we surveyed
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members in the sector. We got thousands of, of people
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writing back about what they needed to know, how can we be
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trans inclusive? What does the law do?
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Can we be protected, etcetera. And we navigated building a
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document that was both ethics and, and values as well as legal
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advice. And we ended up having a huge
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amount of support from the sector.
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The International Council of Museums backed it.
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There's just been an iteration of it released just a couple of
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weeks ago in in Venice of the Italian version.
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And we're moving into the next stage with 11 partners right
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here across the UK about how to implement the guidance with case
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studies. And all of the museums that have
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signed up in this iteration will be producing exhibitions,
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displays, staff training and so forth.
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That makes them confident in maintaining their already
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pre-existing institutional values about L GB TIQ A+
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inclusivity in these spaces and the important role they play in
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maintaining those values being visible within the art and
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heritage sector. So it's a really a really
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important piece of work that we're really proud of, but
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moreover proud that the sector has really stood up and stood
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behind planted as well. Especially I don't know if you
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want to talk about this, but maybe briefly mention the the
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Supreme Court ruling this year, because for our listeners, we
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have listeners across 67 countries and they may not be
00:13:30
aware of what happened this year.
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So over these two last years, there's been a movement that is
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quite the contrary of what's of that inclusivity in in museums
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and galleries. That's right.
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So, so in the broader sector we've had EHRC ruling.
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So so that's you know, our Supreme Court saying that ruling
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against trans people's existence basically and their right to
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exist, so accessing public services, health services,
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toilets, etcetera. It's a, a really, really
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significant set back in trans rights and protection in the UK.
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It's also completely unpoliceable.
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So it's our sectors, our, our, our, our arts and culture sector
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particularly has fought back against it in just, even in
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practical terms, how on earth can we stop people using the
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toilets in our venues? What do you want us to do,
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police their bodies, etcetera, etcetera.
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But then we, we also have the office for students ruling
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against trans inclusive curriculum.
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Again, this for example, within, within my university, which is
00:14:39
an arts university. What, what, how many students do
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we have who aren't queer on campus?
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You know, so they are the future of the arts sector.
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Taking away trans inclusive, trans positive, queer positive
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curriculum is a really significant step as well.
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So we're waiting for that to be enacted.
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So to have the museum and heritage and gallery and archive
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sector stand up and go, we will not stand behind this.
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We will push back against it and we don't think it's workable
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even if you tried to make us do it.
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I think really shows that the creative sector has always been
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a leading sector for who we are as UK society on the ground, who
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we are as people and communities.
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That hopefully will ultimately speak louder than the medium
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misrepresentation of division that is overemphasised and
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inaccurate. Certainly the response Gemma and
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I see to our work and our communities need, the way they
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thrive within creative and cultural spaces as well as
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produce within these spaces, speaks to exactly, exactly the
00:15:49
opposite end of this victim. Well, we're, we're going to talk
00:15:54
about your other projects Museum of Transology because this
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exhibition Talisman is joint forces between to entities, to
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organizations. So Cardian Arts Gemma, you
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founded it a year ago, wasn't it?
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More or less. And there's a charity associated
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with it. So explain your project a little
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bit and then we'll move on to the Museum of Transology.
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Cardian Arts it's a non a new nonprofit and a group of us
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found founded it together. I'm just one of many people
00:16:30
behind it and we came together last year to work on an
00:16:36
exhibition called Ultraviolet that was on in Soho in London
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for just one week. And it was another fantastic
00:16:45
group exhibition of queer and trans artists that was looking
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at queer visual coding in contemporary art practice.
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The exhibition it was on for one, I think it was like 9 days
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and we had thousands of people through the door.
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We did 2 events, both of them. It was like the, the street in
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Soho had to shut down because it was just full of people.
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The the turn out was really mind blowing.
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And so those of us who did the show said there's obviously a
00:17:14
demand for this kind of programming in London still and
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people had travelled from all around the UK actually to come
00:17:20
to the exhibition, which we've also seen for Talisman the same.
00:17:25
And so, yeah, we decided to come together and formalize an
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organization which and we called Cardian, it's the name of the
00:17:35
organization comes from 2 Gaelic words, one meaning family and
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one meaning protection. And we put them together.
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I joke that I also just really like the sound of the name
00:17:47
because it makes me think of Céline Dion, which the gays
00:17:50
appreciate. But yeah, we have this.
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We have a big ambitious mission, I would say as an organization,
00:18:01
the there's three parts to our mission.
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The first one is that we champion the work of queer and
00:18:07
trans artists. Number 2 is we program events
00:18:12
that foster a sense of belonging for our community.
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And then the third one is that we fundraise for our charity
00:18:18
partner and our charity partner is a KTAKT are the only charity
00:18:23
in the UK who are working with queer and trans young people
00:18:27
currently facing homelessness. And so the kind of programming
00:18:31
that we've been doing as an organization is 1 big annual
00:18:34
exhibition every year. We did a performance night event
00:18:38
at the ICA in March. Well, yeah, and.
00:18:41
That was and that was again, brilliantly attended.
00:18:43
And you know, we we made sure that half of the tickets were
00:18:47
available for free and then there were options to pay and
00:18:50
then pay plus donation and the people also could donate on the
00:18:53
night. And we had amazing, amazing
00:18:57
talent performing it that night. We had artist Evan Schadpo, we
00:19:01
had a brilliant singer called Dilemma.
00:19:06
We had the duo Eve Stanton and Florence Peak.
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And then Tom Rasmussen closed out the night with a very sexy
00:19:16
musical performance. And then we also do other
00:19:21
smaller, more intimate programming where we host
00:19:26
dinners for artists, where we work really closely with artists
00:19:29
to think about what they need a key moment in their career,
00:19:33
perhaps their early career or their a pivotal moment in their
00:19:36
career. We had one of those dinners last
00:19:39
night, which is why I look so tired because as you heard, I
00:19:42
was doing camera. Look amazing. 2:00 this morning.
00:19:46
Was it 9 Dion doing that? It was Céline Dion.
00:19:51
I do, I do a very good. My heart will go on.
00:19:56
If that's true, I'm very impressed.
00:19:58
Now, and I'm sober and I still do it.
00:20:00
Well, I think, yeah. There's an opportunity here now,
00:20:04
Gemma. To do it right now, I'm also now
00:20:07
I've had two. There's a limit and how much you
00:20:10
can do it in 24 hours. You have to catch me on a you
00:20:13
have to catch me on a different day.
00:20:15
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
00:20:18
And then we're also about to launch a residency program with
00:20:20
Cardian. We do, yeah.
00:20:23
So that's, we have a brilliant Scottish artist coming down to
00:20:26
London for the month of August. He's going to be resident in a
00:20:29
really fabulous property in Hammersmith that has a very long
00:20:32
queer history. BBC Three made a radio
00:20:35
documentary about the property. It's called A Most Queer House.
00:20:40
And so, yeah, we're bringing an artist there.
00:20:42
And I mean, there's lots and lots of projects that we're
00:20:45
doing and a lot of it involves partnering with other
00:20:48
organizations. And so for this exhibition, you
00:20:54
know, I was thinking about who would be a good person for us to
00:20:57
partner with on the exhibition. And because of everything that's
00:21:00
been going on in the UK, in North America and in the wider
00:21:04
world around trans rights, it, it just felt like a really good
00:21:09
opportunity to work with the EJ in the Museum of Transology.
00:21:12
I often say that the Museum of Transology exhibition that I saw
00:21:15
back then really gave me insight into trans experience that I
00:21:20
wouldn't otherwise have had. And I have a huge number of
00:21:25
trans people in my life, in my chosen family, and I feel that
00:21:30
I'm able to show up for them better because, you know, being
00:21:34
able to engage with the Museum of Transology.
00:21:36
And then obviously, EJ's continued doing fantastic work
00:21:40
over the last decade. The show CSM Transcestry that
00:21:44
just closed was just incredible. And to see the community turn
00:21:47
out was brilliant. So, yeah, I was really, really
00:21:51
delighted that EJ agreed to work with us on this exhibition.
00:21:54
And what has kind of come out of it is just really brilliant.
00:22:00
It's a group show called Talisman, and we called it that
00:22:04
because we were having conversations with artists and
00:22:07
these themes kept coming up around symbols, objects or
00:22:11
people that we're turning to to keep us safe in these
00:22:15
increasingly challenging times. So just to kind of close the
00:22:19
chapter of this Co curation, maybe it would be a great
00:22:24
opportunity, EJ, for you to talk a little bit about the Museum of
00:22:27
Transology that Gemma has described brilliantly, because
00:22:31
it really is the fine detail, detail of that humanizes rather
00:22:36
than vilifies or or pathologizes this particular project that
00:22:42
you've organized. So can you tell us a little bit
00:22:45
about how you've come to define this project and then what it is
00:22:52
and, and how it exists out there?
00:22:54
Because it's not a brick and stone museum, right?
00:22:57
Yeah, that's right. First of all, just want to
00:22:59
emphasize how grateful we were to have this invitation by
00:23:03
Kadian Arts and, and, and from Gemma to, to work on this
00:23:06
project. It's been an absolute delight
00:23:09
because at the end of the day, what felt really right about it
00:23:13
is that we're both not-for-profit.
00:23:15
We both care about fostering belonging for our community
00:23:18
through the arts and you know, the the intention of trying to
00:23:23
provide a space for our community to be visible, but
00:23:29
also to be with each other. All of these, these, these
00:23:32
values aligned for me the work at the Museum of Transology.
00:23:36
The Museum of Transology is now the world's largest collection
00:23:39
of objects and stories relating to trans lives.
00:23:42
We've been collecting for 10 years and it's a material
00:23:45
culture collection. So people donate an object, but
00:23:49
they write their story in handwriting on a little brown
00:23:52
tag that's attached to it. And, and so we archive the tags
00:23:56
as well, which means we turn the story into a piece of material
00:24:00
culture as well. By archiving this, we we enter
00:24:04
into a realm where you can't de accession the stories and remove
00:24:07
them. So those stories are protected
00:24:09
in time as well. And so we've got very clear
00:24:12
ambitions when we've been going. When I set it up, it was that we
00:24:16
would provide a space for trans people to talk about their
00:24:20
experiences rather than being talked about.
00:24:23
You know, it started in 2014, and this was the year that
00:24:26
Laverne Cox appeared on the front cover of Time magazine
00:24:30
with the heading Trans tipping Point.
00:24:32
And really it was the year that the whole world all of a sudden
00:24:36
went trans tastic quite in. You know, there were a couple of
00:24:39
social forces that at play, but essentially this was like, Oh my
00:24:43
God, they used the toilet. You know, like the whole world
00:24:46
just kind of woke up in in this ballistic plans awakening.
00:24:50
And so it felt like we were being spoken about, that we were
00:24:53
being, you know, I have really clear ambitions that by bringing
00:24:56
people's voices into this heritage and arts space, that we
00:25:03
can fight the legal systems that criminalize us, the medical
00:25:08
systems that pathologize us, the media that spectacularizes our
00:25:12
lives and bodies, and the politicians who debate and
00:25:15
demonize us. We would put the humanity back
00:25:18
into the trans experience by talking through our own lens and
00:25:22
our own lives. And so we say that the
00:25:24
collections by us, about us and for us, and we've now got over
00:25:29
1000 objects in the collection and 2000 protest placards and
00:25:34
they all went on show for the exhibition, The 10 year
00:25:37
anniversary exhibition at Central St.
00:25:39
Martin's at the Leatherby Gallery and only closed a couple
00:25:43
of a month or so ago. But the most important thing as
00:25:45
well is that we use curation and an exploration of it as a
00:25:50
practice of care to engage the community.
00:25:54
So there I always say there's 1000 curators of the Museum of
00:25:57
Transology, every single thing that we do down to the
00:26:02
collecting, the donation, the object entry forms, the
00:26:06
cataloguing, the mounting, the exhibition, but everything is
00:26:10
done by trans people, all members of the community.
00:26:13
So we had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people work on
00:26:16
the show over three years. But we've, we, we meet weekly
00:26:20
and we archive every single week and, and groups of us turn up
00:26:23
and it's intergenerational and it's free.
00:26:26
And it's about really sharing the skills, but also presenting
00:26:31
people with an opportunity to feel like they have a place in
00:26:34
history. If if you don't see yourself on
00:26:37
a wall of a museum, you're made historically homeless.
00:26:40
You're taught that your people have never contributed to
00:26:43
society, that that you're not worth, you're destined to not be
00:26:46
remembered. So actually fighting back
00:26:49
against that and going come and write your story and protect
00:26:52
other people's stories enables us as a community to be
00:26:56
empowered to understand that we are actively contributing to the
00:27:01
world around us. And I think really that that
00:27:05
engagement with arts and culture and archiving and curating an
00:27:09
exhibition display as a collaborative community process
00:27:13
is, is a really it holds a very specific magic power.
00:27:18
And in a way that brings us back full circle to talking about
00:27:21
this exhibition. You know, what is that
00:27:22
talismanic power? What really is it about how we
00:27:26
can use our art and our queerness and our talents and
00:27:29
our transness to find each other, but to find our way in
00:27:33
the world when the world sometimes feels overwhelmingly
00:27:38
challenging? This is a way of a pathway out
00:27:41
of that where we don't just compromise and settle for being
00:27:47
accepted. Where we go, we are fabulous.
00:27:50
And you need us as much as we need you, right?
00:27:54
I mean, you just have to go to Pride the other weekend.
00:27:57
There's many more straight people there than there were
00:27:59
queer people. They weren't a part of our
00:28:00
culture, man. So I think, I think there is a
00:28:03
magic there that deserves to be celebrated.
00:28:06
And we're, we're touching on that with this idea of, of the
00:28:09
Talisman in this show. It's so beautiful to listen to
00:28:14
you because both of you are real curators.
00:28:17
You cannot wait to talk about the exhibition.
00:28:21
And I'm trying to contain you because I still, I have another
00:28:24
question because this is exhibition esters.
00:28:27
And I started the podcast by inviting people who weren't
00:28:30
professionals in the arts field to discuss specific exhibitions
00:28:34
together and turn them into episodes.
00:28:36
And so I'm always curious about exhibitions.
00:28:39
And I'm also curious about where it clicked for each one of us.
00:28:44
So Gemma, I read somewhere that your grandmother introduced you
00:28:49
to art, which was kind of a double edged sword because you
00:28:53
were interested in art, but at the same time not a lot of
00:28:56
representativity in the art that you were seeing and you weren't
00:29:00
seeing people that interested you and that you felt connected
00:29:03
to. So was it there and then that it
00:29:06
clicked for you, the art thing and that you felt that that was
00:29:09
your thing? Or was it much later?
00:29:12
Because I know you didn't study art right away.
00:29:14
You studied what was it, politics.
00:29:18
I forget I. Did maths and artificial
00:29:20
intelligence. What?
00:29:23
That's why I'm good with the budget, EJ.
00:29:25
I mean, game on, baby. Wait, wait, wait.
00:29:29
Artificial intelligence. Yeah, before it was really a
00:29:33
thing, I had seen that film with Jude Law in it.
00:29:35
I thought it looked like it was going to be cool.
00:29:39
I I did not do well in my AI studies at all.
00:29:44
So we're moving on from there. That would be a whole episode.
00:29:49
Thank you for that very thoughtful question.
00:29:53
Yeah, it's something I've thought about a lot recently
00:29:55
because my, my my oldest, who is 6, has started talking about my
00:30:04
grandmother a lot. She died before he was
00:30:07
conceived. I was, we were trying to get
00:30:09
pregnant with him when she was dying and we talked about it a
00:30:14
lot and she left some things for him and for the kids.
00:30:18
You know, she'd really hoped that we were going to have a
00:30:20
family. She knew that we were trying.
00:30:22
But this funny thing and she was a huge influence in my life.
00:30:26
My grandmother, she went to an art school when she was a
00:30:31
teenager in Sheffield in the 50s.
00:30:33
So she knew all about the gays because that's her friends were
00:30:39
and actually I have a very elderly friend who's 92 that my
00:30:43
wife and I help care for and he was her best friend.
00:30:47
His brother went who's was also a fabulous gay, went to the art
00:30:50
school with my granny. So yeah, there were gay men in
00:30:53
her life a lot. She was a big old hag and like
00:30:57
me and loved it. But she she was very, very, she
00:31:03
was, I mean, she was a really talented artist.
00:31:04
She was really passionate about art.
00:31:06
She actually had a scholarship to come to London and go to the
00:31:09
Slade. But she got married to my
00:31:11
granddad, got married to my granddad instead and ran her
00:31:14
parents. She worked in her parents shoe
00:31:16
shop and didn't didn't ever go and do her studies.
00:31:20
But so I think when I came along and expressed an interest in
00:31:24
art, she was really happy to have someone that was into it
00:31:27
with her. And we visited a lot of
00:31:29
galleries together. And I really, you know, there's
00:31:32
some really kind of vivid memories I have.
00:31:34
I, there's a, there's this self-portrait of Rembrandt, age
00:31:37
51, that hangs in the National Gallery of Scotland.
00:31:40
And I, and it, the way you used to walk into the main gallery
00:31:43
space, you'd walk in and it was kind of hung behind you where
00:31:46
you'd just come from. And I can remember walking
00:31:49
through into that room. And then she turned around and
00:31:51
saw it and she went and it was like a real kind of gasp.
00:31:56
She was like, I could see how moved she was by this painting
00:32:00
and you know, I remember things like that.
00:32:02
I think she kind of passed that on, like how to feel about art.
00:32:07
But the reason I mention my 6 year old and her is because she,
00:32:12
my grandmother lived with my parents in their house in
00:32:15
Sheffield and she passed away and they've just recently sold
00:32:19
their house, moved to a smaller house.
00:32:22
And so there used to be a bedroom, Granny Anne's room at
00:32:25
my parents house and that that bedroom doesn't exist anymore.
00:32:30
And we have a very, very small box room in our house which is
00:32:37
really empty actually. We've usually got some lovely
00:32:39
young friends staying in the room, but my son Blaze has
00:32:44
recently started calling that bedroom Granny Annes room.
00:32:48
And I don't know why, I don't know what, but I feel like maybe
00:32:52
he's they're talking to each other or something.
00:32:54
There's some lovely connection. It's very sweet.
00:32:56
And he's very like her. And yeah, it's kind of a funny
00:32:59
thing. And he's he's really like,
00:33:02
that's it. It just one day he was like, Oh
00:33:04
yeah, Granny Ann's room. And he only calls that bedroom
00:33:06
Granny Ann's room. It's really bizarre.
00:33:08
Even if like our friend, even when our friend is living in
00:33:11
that room and it's their bedroom, he's like, no, no,
00:33:12
Granny Ann's room. So, so yeah, she's the one that
00:33:15
taught me to love art. But the point you said about
00:33:19
like it not necessarily being representational for me and
00:33:22
myself and I, you know, it's true.
00:33:24
I didn't see myself reflected in art.
00:33:26
So I loved it. I loved the technique of art.
00:33:29
I loved, you know, seeing art and the craft of it.
00:33:32
But in terms of the content, you know, I, I, yeah, I think I
00:33:37
probably struggled to connect and, but actually a big turning
00:33:41
point for me was when I was at university doing maths and AI.
00:33:45
I was able to pick sorry, I everyone laughs at this, I'm
00:33:51
sorry. Listen, I can do a really good
00:33:53
spreadsheet. My finances are in order.
00:33:57
But you know what? While I was listening to you, I
00:34:00
was thinking, these people work so hard, you work so much, and
00:34:06
now I know why, at least for you, Gemma.
00:34:07
I don't know what EJ, I don't know what EJ's secret is.
00:34:11
But yeah, sorry. I do, I do work hard, but I'm
00:34:14
also, I don't know, I'm a classic, the addict.
00:34:16
My relationship with my work is not necessarily healthy.
00:34:20
But yeah, I, when I was studying, I was able to pick up
00:34:27
secondary subjects and art history was one of the subjects
00:34:31
I picked up and I just absolutely loved it.
00:34:34
But the key was at Edinburgh University, where I was
00:34:37
studying, there was also a joint honors degree, art history and
00:34:40
fine art. And many of the students on my
00:34:43
art history course were also practicing artists and had art
00:34:47
studios in the art school. And so I used to go and hang out
00:34:49
with them in their studios. And that was the moment that I
00:34:52
was like, this is the world I want to be in this I could see a
00:34:56
role for myself. I knew I wanted to work with
00:34:59
artists. I wanted to build platforms to
00:35:02
present their work. I wanted to find ways to connect
00:35:06
with different audiences. I wanted to help artists tell
00:35:11
stories about their work. That was it was getting to know
00:35:14
artists that really changed it for me.
00:35:19
How fantastic and incredible because the first thing you
00:35:23
described was someone else reacting, someone you loved
00:35:26
reacting to network. And now you're talking about the
00:35:30
artists and how they worked and how you connected with them.
00:35:33
So it's such a communitarian sort of foundational relation to
00:35:39
art. It's really incredible.
00:35:42
EJ Same question for you. Were you connected to art in
00:35:46
your childhood, teens? Was it a later click?
00:35:51
How? How did it happen for you?
00:35:54
Certainly for the Museum of Transology, there's a very
00:35:57
specific moment and it was, I've mentioned that I started it in
00:36:01
2014. The collection was sort of this,
00:36:05
we refer to it as the trans tipping point.
00:36:07
I'm actually a social historian, so the kind of curation that I
00:36:10
do really relies on on finding stories and showing stories and,
00:36:14
and unpacking the, the context within which they exist.
00:36:18
And so it's just been a real joy working with artists directly to
00:36:21
hear about the work that they're producing.
00:36:23
You know, that's, that's kind of where I jump in and I at the
00:36:26
same time as as doing that that, that that was happening in 2014,
00:36:32
I was working for the National Trust curating a very large
00:36:37
collection of fashion and textiles.
00:36:39
There were 14 pieces in the collection and dating back
00:36:43
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.
00:36:45
And I became a little bit obsessed with this idea of
00:36:50
freezing rooms in time. This is what we do classically
00:36:54
with the National Trust and, and, and large sort of stately
00:36:58
homes and heritage houses is we set up the dining room and they
00:37:02
might have lived here like this. And you walk through and you
00:37:05
step back in time and you think that you know, the tables and
00:37:08
the tablecloths and the, these belong to the family and they
00:37:11
might have actually touched that club.
00:37:12
And Charles Baudelaire famously says that the, the, the, the
00:37:17
beauty of collecting, the magic of collecting, the miracle of
00:37:20
collecting is that we collect ourselves.
00:37:22
I, I was also going through some gender affirming surgery and I
00:37:28
was lying in my hospital room and I was looking around at all
00:37:32
the things in the hospital room going, where's my frozen room in
00:37:37
time? This is, this is such a, a, a
00:37:40
widely shared trans experience that people could step in and by
00:37:45
stepping in could potentially understand how important and
00:37:49
intimate and, and, and in so many ways relatable the
00:37:54
experience is if we just had a space for these artifacts and to
00:37:58
set up these kind of kind of trans understandings.
00:38:03
And as I was sort of thinking about this, my best friends came
00:38:06
up to visit me in the hospital room and one of them stuck their
00:38:11
hand through the door and it was holding a balloon from the gift
00:38:14
shop downstairs. It's a boy.
00:38:18
So I speak to the nurse and she let me take the streets and the
00:38:23
pillowcases and the little paper cups that I had my medicine in
00:38:28
and they literally everything. She just take the whole room.
00:38:32
And I had my It's a boy collection.
00:38:35
And that was the first display that I did of the Museum of
00:38:39
Transology was to recreate this frozen room in time in using
00:38:44
the, the curatorial methodologies that actually had
00:38:46
got from the most sort of traditional heritage
00:38:51
organization in the UK. And re appropriated it to make
00:38:55
it incredibly timely and incredibly queer.
00:38:58
And to respond exactly to what was going on today so that we
00:39:01
didn't forget it tomorrow. Because otherwise we were just
00:39:04
going to fall through the cracks and into the historical abyss
00:39:07
once again. You know, the, the idea with
00:39:10
the, you know, we learned a lot in 2017 when it was the partial
00:39:15
decriminalization of homosexuality in England and
00:39:19
Wales. Here in, in the UK it takes, you
00:39:22
know, it could take a couple of years to get particularly a
00:39:25
social history exhibition or a mixed media exhibition together
00:39:28
in museums across the UK. So around 2014 all the museums
00:39:32
were going, we're really rubbish at LGBT representation.
00:39:37
What are we going to do? How are we going to get
00:39:38
something together for 2017 in time when we don't know what's
00:39:41
in our collections? And so that couple of years lead
00:39:46
time to think about what was in the collections.
00:39:49
We also realized that a lot of the social history in the
00:39:52
collections as opposed to creative output by queer artists
00:39:57
were the medical records, were the criminal records were, you
00:40:01
know, all the same things we were potentially going to have
00:40:06
to rely upon. If we didn't start building a
00:40:09
trans collection, we wouldn't be learning from the queer past.
00:40:13
And what's the point of doing all this queer history for the
00:40:15
wider world if we're not learning from it ourselves
00:40:18
within the community, right. So that's when I was like, we
00:40:21
are just going to end up with criminal records about the trans
00:40:23
community in 100 years time. We're just going to have these
00:40:26
newspaper reports again in 100 years time we have.
00:40:28
To do something about this. So it was all those sort of cogs
00:40:32
colliding. I don't know if cogs collide.
00:40:34
Maybe you could give me an update on that with your AI
00:40:37
skills, Gemma. But but, but it certainly was
00:40:41
all the pieces falling into place that was born of a very
00:40:44
personal experience sort of segueing into how can I curate
00:40:50
for social change? How can we use curation as a
00:40:53
force that actually is more than more, more than a spectacular,
00:40:59
more than a show? It has intentionality and, and,
00:41:03
and power. Yeah, yeah.
00:41:06
That's leading to my, to my next question, which is the the
00:41:11
reframing of exhibition making because you're both curators and
00:41:15
obviously there's always these kind of identity politics thrown
00:41:19
at us, you know, saying, oh, is there a, you know, female way of
00:41:24
making art? What does that even mean?
00:41:26
But you're reframing things. So how how do you think that
00:41:31
your missions reframe curating in particular and maybe that
00:41:36
could lead us to the exhibition Talisman that we're talking
00:41:39
about and. This is something that I thought
00:41:41
about an awful lot when I was writing my book because, you
00:41:45
know, I needed to, if I was going to write a book called
00:41:47
Queer Art, I needed to understand firstly, what I meant
00:41:51
by queer art and secondly, why, why it was even relevant to have
00:41:54
a book about queer art. And so for the purposes of that
00:41:59
book, I took Queer art to mean anything that refers to the
00:42:07
queer experience, implicitly or explicitly.
00:42:13
And the reason it felt very relevant to put all of that work
00:42:17
together in a book was because applying A queer lens to art can
00:42:24
provide new ways to connect with the art.
00:42:28
You know, I often use David Hockney as an example.
00:42:32
I knew all about David Hockney because I'm from Yorkshire and
00:42:35
because he's one of the most famous artists in the world and
00:42:38
certainly one of the most famous living artists.
00:42:40
And I had seen loads of his work.
00:42:45
But I and I had studied 2 art history degrees, I think, before
00:42:49
I really thought about the queerness in his work.
00:42:53
And the queerness in David Hockley's work is extremely
00:42:56
explicit. You know, he was making etchings
00:42:59
in the 1960s of two boys in bed together and talking very openly
00:43:03
about defending his way of life. But art history has not framed
00:43:09
the work as queer. It's not celebrated the
00:43:12
queerness in his work at all. I mean, at all is wrong.
00:43:18
There are people that have been doing that work.
00:43:20
Absolutely. You know, I think a real turning
00:43:23
point for me was the Queer British art exhibition at Tape
00:43:26
Britain that Claire Barlow curated that made me think about
00:43:31
the the relevance of applying A queer lens to art history and to
00:43:36
art. And so, you know, that I guess
00:43:40
that's kind of where I come from in terms of like my art
00:43:43
historical training and my background, my art historical
00:43:46
background. But when it comes to
00:43:49
contemporary art, it feels really, really important that
00:43:53
people who wouldn't necessarily ordinarily engage with art and
00:44:00
culture, I think that art and culture is that relevant to them
00:44:03
in their lives. It's I think it's very important
00:44:06
that people find ways to connect with the work that reflects them
00:44:12
and their community. You know, art can be a very
00:44:15
powerful way of making sense of your own identity by looking at
00:44:20
other people's perspectives and experiences articulated through
00:44:24
their art. Something that we've talked
00:44:26
about a lot in this show is that there there are lots of examples
00:44:31
where something made by an artist through their art
00:44:35
practice. It can can maybe be the only
00:44:39
way, the best way, or the only way of articulating something
00:44:43
that is otherwise quite challenging to articulate can't
00:44:46
just be said through words, for example.
00:44:47
You know, with art, you can really express a feeling, you
00:44:51
know, So with my curatorial work, I feel like it's, it is
00:44:55
relevant to apply a queer lens, but I think that can be done in
00:45:00
different ways. And it's important that it's
00:45:02
always done in thoughtful ways. So for example, I would never
00:45:07
curate an exhibition that was called queer art.
00:45:10
That was just a group of artists brought together because they
00:45:15
are queer. That feels really reductive.
00:45:17
That doesn't feel like we're really understanding and
00:45:19
appreciating that art. It doesn't feel like we're
00:45:21
having a progressive, sensitive conversation about the topics
00:45:26
that they're handling in their work.
00:45:29
Making a book about that topic is different because that book
00:45:32
didn't exist. You know, we should have had
00:45:34
that that book decades ago and that book didn't exist and you
00:45:38
know, there wasn't anything out there that was super accessible
00:45:41
and that anybody could pick up. But when it comes to exhibition
00:45:45
making, you know, I, I think that queerness can be part of
00:45:48
the conversation. So, you know, for us, we're
00:45:51
talking about Talisman. We're talking about these things
00:45:54
that people turn to the magic, the power and the resilience
00:45:58
that comes from our community and the tools that we use to
00:46:02
help us find that power. You know, and I, I did an
00:46:07
exhibition a couple of years ago at the Leslie Lohmann Museum in
00:46:10
New York called Dreaming of Home that was all about home and what
00:46:14
that might mean to queer and trans folk.
00:46:17
You know, whether that's about domesticity, whether it's about
00:46:20
family, whether it's about a house or if it's about moving,
00:46:24
migration, chosen family, feeling at home in your own
00:46:28
body. You know, these topics can mean
00:46:30
so much to to people, to audiences, but a queer
00:46:34
perspective on those topics is something different and unique
00:46:39
and it should be given space. You know, the exhibition I've
00:46:42
just done just opened in Norfolk at Walterton that you mentioned
00:46:46
the two person show with Maggie Hambling and Roy Robertson.
00:46:49
That exhibition is called Sea State.
00:46:52
It was conceived in response to the Sainsbury's Center local,
00:46:56
the local institutions program all about the the the question
00:47:02
they were asking. The opposing was Will the Sea
00:47:04
Survivors, and so they I was invited to do an exhibition in
00:47:10
collaboration with Simon Oldfield, the artistic director
00:47:12
at Walterton, responding to that theme.
00:47:14
And the two artists I thought of first of all, that I know work
00:47:18
very closely with the sea are Maggie Hambling and Roy
00:47:20
Robertson. They're also both queer artists,
00:47:24
and they are thinking about the sea as, you know, a kind of very
00:47:30
powerful metaphor for many life experiences.
00:47:34
The sea is something that really resonates with a lot of queer
00:47:37
people. You know, there's the themes
00:47:39
around mermaids, about unconditional acceptance of the
00:47:43
sea and the water. Somebody, an artist I'm working
00:47:47
with on a new show said to me the other day, maybe it's about
00:47:51
the sea. When you look out to sea, you
00:47:53
can just keep going. You know, I think there's
00:47:55
something kind of like this hopeful potential there.
00:47:58
So, you know, that's an, that exhibition in Norfolk is about
00:48:01
the sea. But the queerness that those two
00:48:04
artists bring to that topic is relevant.
00:48:07
And it's worth having, you know, worth discussing.
00:48:10
Yeah, it's funny because I was at the quarto the other day.
00:48:13
There was this exhibition of the German collection that is very
00:48:16
close to the Quarto collection. And there was a painting by
00:48:20
Toulouse Lautrec called Shokau depicting a woman facing the
00:48:28
spectator. And I was so struck by that
00:48:31
painting. And I thought you could see that
00:48:33
woman in the street today. The, the, the stance, the
00:48:37
masculinity, you know, there was something so special about it.
00:48:43
And I was with a friend who told me the story about Shoko, who I
00:48:46
didn't know. And this was a clown, so a
00:48:52
female artist who performed as a clown, which at the time was
00:48:55
quite revolutionary and openly lesbian.
00:49:00
And then I went to the Musee d'orsay website to learn more
00:49:04
about this story. The there's a description of the
00:49:10
room. It's another painting, the room
00:49:12
that she's in and someone is in the back and there's a mention
00:49:17
of that person potentially being a client.
00:49:20
There's no explanation of the relationship of Toulouse Lautrec
00:49:24
with her, particularly of including her in Elle, the whole
00:49:28
catalog of prostitutes that he. So all of that history is
00:49:34
lacking. So you don't understand that
00:49:36
character and you don't understand that physicality and
00:49:39
that pride and that stance. So the history is truncated.
00:49:44
But of course you can talk about prostitution because of course,
00:49:46
you know, that's something that is relevant always, you know,
00:49:50
for the place of. Women.
00:49:51
Yeah, if it's the, if it's the, the.
00:49:54
Idea but being discussed, being discussed through a misogynistic
00:49:58
framework. I'm sure it's really it's I
00:50:01
mean, that happens all the time. Historically, that is, those
00:50:06
LGBTQIA plus stories have been omitted or actively erased.
00:50:13
And you know, there's a lot of work going into uncovering those
00:50:17
stories and a lot of the kind of archival work that EJ was
00:50:21
speaking about is just really key to that.
00:50:24
It's interesting that you kind of gave the example of Musee
00:50:28
Dorsey because they've had kind of, I say I would call it a
00:50:33
little bit of controversy around this.
00:50:34
Recently they just had an exhibition by the painter Gustav
00:50:38
Kaiba, who painted lots of sexy men, some with their bums in the
00:50:46
air when they were scrubbing floors and stuff, getting out
00:50:49
baths. And in that exhibition, they did
00:50:53
in the exhibition text and the curation acknowledged the queer
00:50:57
possibility of the work. You know, it's, it's according
00:51:03
to the museum, impossible to know how the artist identified
00:51:06
what the intention was because there's no archival material to
00:51:10
back that up. Although I'm pretty sure if we
00:51:14
were to really dig, we'd find it.
00:51:16
But, you know, it queerness in the work it it, it's subjective.
00:51:23
And I think a lot of the time it can be about the reading and how
00:51:25
we read the work. But there was, yeah, there was
00:51:29
uproar about that queer possibility being applied to
00:51:33
that artist. But then, you know, we see other
00:51:36
examples, like the painter lot of Laserstein who painted
00:51:42
herself and her female models. And again, it's like it's giving
00:51:46
lesbian, but no museum is ever acknowledging that.
00:51:50
And the lesbians are like, why aren't you acknowledging that
00:51:52
these people might be lesbians? You know?
00:51:54
So yeah, I think it it people find in terms of particularly
00:51:59
with art history and museum displays to, to have
00:52:03
acknowledgement of those lives can be very, very validating.
00:52:07
Even if it's a question, it's just a question to consider.
00:52:11
It can be really validating and it can be really important.
00:52:14
But there's a lot of fear around that and around doing it.
00:52:18
I think one of the great things about the way EJ works is
00:52:22
thinking of, you know, like with the trans inclusion guidance,
00:52:24
it's, it's thinking about, it's not just one project, it's
00:52:28
thinking about passing it on. And actually, a lot of the way
00:52:31
that we've collaborated around the exhibition Talisman is we've
00:52:35
been working with EJ's community curators that work with him at
00:52:39
Museum of Transology, most of whom are quite young or early
00:52:43
career or a pivotal moment in their life where their identity
00:52:47
and their career might be intersecting.
00:52:49
And we can work with those people and pass on our
00:52:53
experiences and know that these people are going to be going out
00:52:55
and making their own exhibitions.
00:52:58
Yeah. Speaking of which, EJ, this idea
00:53:01
that validation that Gemma was mentioning, you work really hard
00:53:05
towards not reducing the idea of validation of just a sort of
00:53:11
empty idea of representation, but more an idea of learning
00:53:16
with the history and having a real embodied knowledge of
00:53:22
people's lives. And so my question to you as
00:53:25
well is this idea, is this question pertaining to curating.
00:53:29
So how do you reframe your curating precisely to open up
00:53:32
this idea of validation and and and and how do the projects then
00:53:38
take different shapes than maybe a museum exhibition, let's say?
00:53:44
I, I think they do take the shape of museum exhibitions.
00:53:48
That can be the final outcome certainly in my work.
00:53:53
But I think that I think very well.
00:53:55
I do, I think very closely about what does it mean to be trancing
00:53:59
exhibition making? What does trans curatorial
00:54:02
practice well, what does transness control attribute to
00:54:05
curatorial practice at large? How can we impact upon the
00:54:10
sector with radical new forms and ways of thinking through
00:54:14
what we do and, and at the heart of it is embedding the values of
00:54:20
the community in the practice. So this can be really obvious,
00:54:27
but really important approaches in, in the trans community.
00:54:30
We've got a very strong commitment to anti racist
00:54:33
intersectional approaches. We've got very, very strong
00:54:37
accessibility politics, you know, the idea, all of these,
00:54:41
these commitments, you know, feminist values, etcetera.
00:54:45
All these these commitments come together at one to represent
00:54:49
what the trans community stands for, because trans liberation is
00:54:53
liberation for all. That's, that's, that's that's
00:54:56
the catch phrase that we use. The idea being that if we can be
00:55:00
freed from gender stereotypes, gender normativity, this this
00:55:04
will benefit everyone. It's really key to my practice
00:55:08
that we bring community into the process of the exhibition making
00:55:12
when they're trying to find themselves and tell their
00:55:14
stories rather than needing bed, not evidence of people having
00:55:20
had sex or non heteronormative lives.
00:55:24
You know, a lot of a lot of queer people in the past did
00:55:26
still have to get married did still have to lead to their
00:55:29
families, right, Etcetera. Right.
00:55:30
So just just finding the evidence is not the, the
00:55:33
pressure to find evidence of that is not the same as as any
00:55:38
heterosexual experiences in the curatorial world putting on an
00:55:41
exhibition going hang on, Are you sure that they really were
00:55:45
heterosexual? Because those pieces of evidence
00:55:47
apparently exist institutionally, You know, and
00:55:50
it's, it's not just I think this approach that we've built over
00:55:53
the last 10 years of upskilling the community, but always having
00:55:58
all these core values at play in the work has fed out into wider
00:56:02
projects that don't necessarily need to be trans projects to see
00:56:07
these methodologies put to work. But they are born of the trans
00:56:11
experience of needing acknowledgement that we exist
00:56:14
and, and, and are owed an honour and a place in society.
00:56:18
So for example, an exhibition I did late 2324 in the at the
00:56:25
Ditching Museum of Arts and Crafts was called Double Weave
00:56:29
Born and Allen's Modernist textiles and Ditchling has an
00:56:32
incredible history of arts and crafts and particularly in
00:56:37
design. And the museum was turning 10 in
00:56:41
the new building basically. And they approached me to do an
00:56:44
exhibition because the founder of the of, of the museum, Hilary
00:56:51
Born her, had, had lived and made textiles, modernist
00:56:57
textiles with her partner for decades.
00:57:01
All their lives they'd lived together and they had studios
00:57:06
across Ditchling. They they had galleries in, in
00:57:09
London. They produced the all the
00:57:12
textiles that, for example, hang in the Royal Exhibition World
00:57:19
Festival Hall in London. They made the textiles that were
00:57:23
the first textiles in the first ever jet planes in the UK.
00:57:27
They did all the textiles that were in Ben Hur, the epic movie.
00:57:32
So these were in, yeah, incredible work.
00:57:37
When when they went away on holiday later in life, they were
00:57:44
staying in a bed and breakfast up North, the bed and breakfast
00:57:49
caught on fire. Hilary jumped out of the window
00:57:54
and her partner did not and perished in the fire.
00:57:57
And she went into deep, deep, deep mourning and moved back to
00:58:00
Ditchling and couldn't get out of her morning until her sister,
00:58:04
more than a decade later, said the school church, the school
00:58:08
school buildings up for sale. Why don't you build it and start
00:58:11
a why don't you buy them and start a museum and put all your
00:58:15
textiles with with with your partner in there.
00:58:17
And it was this, this, this foundation of this entire museum
00:58:20
and their relationship was never spoken about.
00:58:23
So for the 10 year anniversary, I got 10 women from across
00:58:27
Sussex where Ditchling is. And they all contributed a
00:58:30
different story and a different reading of these women's lives
00:58:33
and relationship and work. Some of it was was modernist
00:58:37
history and the way that women are overlooked and women makers
00:58:40
are overlooked, particularly if they are in in a craft
00:58:43
modernism, you know, modernist practice like textiles.
00:58:46
We had art historians, textile historians, dress historians.
00:58:50
We had a dike from the local community.
00:58:52
But what we all came back to at the end of the project is that
00:58:57
the body of work that these women have produced throughout
00:59:00
their lifetime together was absolutely, absolutely founded
00:59:07
upon the strength of their intimacy and their relationship.
00:59:10
And that's what the queerness was.
00:59:12
That's what the lesbianism of this story is.
00:59:15
Their work stands on its own, but by understanding that their
00:59:20
relationship was part of their creativity and their really,
00:59:25
really, really cute business skills.
00:59:28
For example, by understanding that they ran the business, they
00:59:31
ran the weaving studios, they ran the dying, they swapped
00:59:34
vegetables to make dyes with other local lesbian lovers in
00:59:39
the area that also had little weaving houses.
00:59:41
You know, like this. This is about this history that
00:59:44
that brings Ditch link to life because it went across multiple
00:59:47
sites of making. It brings modernism to life at
00:59:50
the very highest cutting edge in London in the 1950s.
00:59:54
You know, it brings women's technology and business him into
00:59:57
life, but it's still all drawn out of their lesbianism and
01:00:00
their relationship, you know. So it was the process of trans
01:00:05
in the exhibition making by applying my community practice
01:00:09
and the values of letting us speak for ourselves and multiple
01:00:13
voices and working collectively to make the exhibition.
01:00:17
Those trans values in a lesbian exhibition were actually what
01:00:21
made it so beautiful and multi vocal.
01:00:24
You know, and I and I think it is this idea that we can.
01:00:27
Change this elite mode of highly educated, hierarchical, cyst
01:00:33
white male, upper middle class, if not more elite practitioners
01:00:38
that are the curators of the world and actually bring in
01:00:40
people with lived experience, but moreover passion for their
01:00:44
communities and their communities, cultural outputs
01:00:48
that that really can drive a shift in, in in in curatorial
01:00:54
practice at large, I think. In the exhibition Talisman,
01:00:58
there's also this effort, I believe to also decenter from
01:01:03
London, so that you have artists from all across the UK, for
01:01:07
example Richard McGuire, who has these absolutely incredible tiny
01:01:12
drawings that are so complex and LED.
01:01:14
When we started putting Cardian Arts together as an
01:01:17
organization, one of the things that we really, really wanted to
01:01:21
make sure we did was that we presented work by artists from
01:01:25
right across the UK. You know, there is more stuff
01:01:30
happening in London often than there is across the rest of the
01:01:33
country. And so, yeah, that felt very
01:01:36
important. And yeah, I mean, we treat all
01:01:38
of the artists exactly the same, even though there is Labaina
01:01:43
Hamid in the show who's about to represent Britain in the Venice
01:01:46
Biennale. And then we've got some very
01:01:49
early career artists in the exhibition or we've got artists
01:01:52
who've been making work in for a long time, but haven't
01:01:55
necessarily had that many exhibition opportunities.
01:01:57
So yeah, I, I would say that it's very diverse in terms of
01:02:02
artist career, stage, as well as artist identity in the mediums
01:02:07
that they're working with and the way they approach their
01:02:09
work. I, I think both EJ and I feel
01:02:13
very passionately about providing opportunity for
01:02:16
intergenerational conversation. And so having artists who you
01:02:23
know, and I think this is something as well, is that to be
01:02:27
queer often involves queering time, particularly to be trans,
01:02:33
you know, when people are finding their authentic
01:02:36
identities later in life and kind of starting all over again
01:02:40
at certain points. And lots of people who identify
01:02:44
as LGBTQIA plus, you know, bigger things out at at
01:02:50
different points and depending on where you live and what
01:02:53
access you've had to different reference points and culture and
01:02:57
role models, you know, stuff can happen later or younger, you
01:03:02
know, it just all really depends.
01:03:03
And so I was sat with a couple of friends the other day, 2
01:03:07
trans women, one who is several decades older than the other.
01:03:11
And the the younger 1 was really kind of mentoring and supporting
01:03:18
the older one because the younger one had transitioned
01:03:22
much younger and had known she and probably partly because she
01:03:26
was growing up in a different era and you know that.
01:03:30
So I think the queers are very good at turning the world upside
01:03:33
down and using that to our strengths.
01:03:37
And so I would say that's kind of how we've approached this
01:03:40
exhibition actually in terms of highlights.
01:03:42
It's wonderful to work with Lebena, particularly in such an
01:03:45
exciting time for her. She's so busy and it means so
01:03:49
much that she contributed work to this show.
01:03:52
It means so much to the artist to be exhibiting alongside her.
01:03:56
Similarly with Jesse Darling, you know, these are artists who
01:04:00
the earlier career artists in the exhibition really look up
01:04:03
to, But then it's so exciting to be presenting artists like Zach
01:04:07
you mentioned, who's a brilliant, brilliant painter
01:04:09
who's only really focused on painting in the last couple of
01:04:14
years and they're almost 40. But then we've got really young
01:04:18
artists as well, and artists like Emily Poe.
01:04:23
Beautiful light books in the show that she recently exhibited
01:04:26
at Southwark Park Galleries. Ajamu X, who is a legendary
01:04:31
photographer, inspires generations of artists.
01:04:35
I'm sure EJ is now going to tell you about one of the artists
01:04:37
that he brought to the show, Wayne Lucas, who is brilliant
01:04:41
and has had such an incredible response to his installation.
01:04:45
Hasn't he though? It's been so gorgeous.
01:04:48
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
01:04:51
Wayne to I'll, I'll live through the 80s AIDS crisis here in, in
01:04:58
London. It was under Margaret Thatcher.
01:05:02
The media was misrepresenting and, and causing absolute
01:05:05
hysteria. Really, it's very similar to
01:05:09
what we're experiencing now with the trans community.
01:05:12
You know, this, this, this media funeral that is, that's, that's,
01:05:16
that's not speaking the truth basically.
01:05:19
And Wayne has produced recreations using found council
01:05:28
doors that were the same as the ones that he was familiar with
01:05:33
from this period when he was a young man in the 80s.
01:05:38
And on the council doors in the toilets, they used to have
01:05:41
horrific graffiti carved into them that was homophobic
01:05:45
graffiti. One of one of the ones he
01:05:47
remembers really clearly was GAY got AIDS yet, you know, so, so
01:05:52
all these kind of really, really rough, very intimidating,
01:05:57
frightening kind of language being used in these public
01:06:00
spaces, particularly public men's spaces.
01:06:05
But the other thing that he experienced, even though he was
01:06:07
confronted with this homophobia, was the idea that there were
01:06:13
other gay men out there, that there were other quids out
01:06:17
there. And so it was a nuanced space
01:06:19
for him of mixed emotions, mixed vulnerabilities, you know, And
01:06:25
so he's recreated the doors and he's, he's a beautiful artist,
01:06:29
beautiful, beautiful artist, figuratively, all sorts of
01:06:31
things. Got lots of different practices,
01:06:33
embroidery, all sorts of things. And he's carved in the graffiti,
01:06:37
but then he's put in a very fine gold leaf into the scratchings
01:06:42
of of these abusive words. You know, he's put glory holes
01:06:45
in, but he's embroidered them so delicately actually, the wool
01:06:49
into the wood in different shades of pink, you know, just
01:06:52
the, the skill and artistry, but the sheer beauty of it.
01:06:56
But a very controversial idea, you know, And so so the
01:07:00
preciousness of of of the multitude of experiences being
01:07:06
reawakened through the materiality of the objects, but
01:07:10
also the sharing of this experience because he hangs the
01:07:13
doors one after another, so on hinges, so you can actually walk
01:07:18
through them as if you are cruising and you are going
01:07:20
through the spaces. And so he passes on knowledge
01:07:24
intergenerationally about being a queer man who who had to
01:07:29
navigate his own identity and his own desire, but also public
01:07:33
attitudes on to A next generation who today finds that
01:07:37
this kind of intimacy and and sexual awakening is often
01:07:43
achieved digitally through apps online.
01:07:46
So it's a different culture. And so he's passed on knowledge
01:07:50
about the community that goes beyond just fear, you know, but
01:07:54
does recount that to a younger generation.
01:07:57
And I just, I think it's a really, really quite magic
01:08:01
example of the way in which art can talk in a very complex,
01:08:07
experiential way through through these incredible works that
01:08:12
we're so lucky to have such talented artists being even able
01:08:15
to conceptualize, let alone produce.
01:08:18
I think. I think it's just a really magic
01:08:20
example of of how it it keeps our own culture alive as well.
01:08:27
Thank you so much for this conversation.
01:08:29
Thank. You so much Joanna, for inviting
01:08:32
us on and for talking about the exhibition with us and for your
01:08:36
thoughtful questions. We really appreciate it.
01:08:38
I wish you a pleasant summer. Thank you again for your
01:08:41
generosity. Thanks, Joanna.
01:08:42
Thank you. Thanks so much.
01:08:44
Bye. Thank you so much for listening.
01:08:46
It was a pleasure to celebrate Pride Month with this fantastic
01:08:50
interview and to explore the recent and current highlights of
01:08:54
Gemma, Ross, Bentley and EJ Scott's brilliant career.
01:08:59
Thanks for listening, we hope you have a great time.
01:09:02
Until the next episode, stay present, stay exhibition Estes,
01:09:07
respect yourself and others, and don't forget we visit
01:09:11
exhibitions so that you have to take care.