We have an interview episode! Gallerist Sarah Le Quang Sang showcases and promotes female and queer artists, fighting, one step at a time, to reduce the price gap between genders, the lack of LGBTQIA+ representation in archives, collections, art fairs and private collections, but also the linear conception of artistic careers.
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How empowering can the #artmarket be? How can a commercial gallery push boundaries? Be more inclusive? And what are the intersections between collections, trans rights, motherhood, family and queer communities? Sarah Le Quang Sang may not have all the answers, but she has all the good questions. She asks: why are birthdates important? Why is there an artistic career template? Who has access to museum collections? Art fairs?
If you enjoyed this episode, and if you enjoy reading, Joana's Substack might be for you.
A new star in the constellation of London galleries, Sarah Le Quang Sang, established a commercial gallery in Shoreditch in 2024–SLQS–to champion female and queer artists. We mention her current exhibition of three Vietnamese artists, Vicky Do, Hua Dung-Clerget and Duong Thuy Nguyen, as well as the previous exhibition by trans non-binary artist Bex Wade which prompted an acquisition of their work by the V&A, now shown at Young V&A Bethnal Green.
We had to mention the Supreme Court Ruling in past April reducing gender to biological sex, and thus legally erasing trans women particularly, and the trans community in general. Bex Wade was invited to write about the photos of the exhibition (Queer nightlife in the US in 2010s, a time of lightness and joy) in the context of anti-trans movements rising and becoming more vocal. I read an excerpt of the text at the end of the episode.
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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: If you enjoy the podcast A Brush With and You Are Good, you will enjoy Exhibitionistas, where artists are unveiled through current and pertinent angles, and through thoughts and feelings. These podcasts were a great inspiration for our format because they're nerdy and engaging, researched and approachable. The co-host and the guest co-host or interviewed guest engage in a conversation informed by an accessible and lively presentation of the subject, through which you can reflect on a show or a topic or discover it, learn or re-evaluate artistic topics crossing over into our everyday lives.
Chapters
00:00:00 Introduction
00:06:42 Sarah Le Quang Sang
00:11:07 First Connection to Art
00:14:12 Art and Motherhood
00:17:04 Adapting and Reinventing the Rules
00:22:12 The Impact of Galleries’ New Ethos on Collectors
00:23:03 Why Open a Commercial Gallery Now?
00:25:51 Responding to Women and Queer Erasure in the Market
00:28:13 How to Understand Identity in Art
00:41:02 Future of the program
00:48:13 An Excerpt from Bex Wade’s Text Yes / No (Art Review)
#contemporaryart #lgbtqia+ #sarahlequangsang #exhibitionistas #exhibitionistaspodcast #joanaprneves #bexwade #vickydo #ingridberthonmoines #dyanagravina
00:00:04
I'm Joanna Pyroneves, your host, and this is exhibitionist this
00:00:14
I'm an independent writer and curator with a wide-ranging 2
00:00:17
decades career in contemporary art, from commercial galleries
00:00:21
to art fairs, from research to curating, from Lisbon to London
00:00:26
through Paris. But when I'm asked what I do
00:00:30
outside the out world, the inevitable reaction is, oh, I
00:00:34
don't know anything about contemporary art.
00:00:37
Ouch. So call it a midlife crisis,
00:00:40
call it arrogance, but I gave myself the task of trying to
00:00:44
fill that gap with Co host conversation.
00:00:47
Episodes centered around a genuine exchange of thoughts,
00:00:52
feelings and precious context around solo exhibitions,
00:00:57
interviews and special episodes based on a particular topic to
00:01:03
keep you alert and on your toes. If you want to read further into
00:01:07
some of the topics discussed in the episodes and more, you can
00:01:11
also find me on Sub Stack under my name, Joanna Pyroneves.
00:01:20
Hi there, a few notes on the episode you're about to listen
00:01:25
to. So I'm interviewing Sarah Lacung
00:01:28
Sung because to my knowledge she has the only commercial gallery
00:01:33
dedicated to showcasing and promoting art produced by women
00:01:40
and queer artists in the UK. So the gallery is called SLQS
00:01:44
and is based or is located in Shoreditch in London.
00:01:50
So when I mention the artist Bex Wade and the acquisition of
00:01:56
their work by the VNA. So Bex Wade had an exhibition
00:02:01
right before the current one at SLQSI say that Bex Wade was the
00:02:07
first non binary artist in the collection which is not correct.
00:02:11
So when you get to that point of the introduction, remember that
00:02:15
Bex Wade is a trans non binary artists.
00:02:19
And in the words of Zorian Clayton, another of Bex's
00:02:25
photographs purchased with art font support, has recently gone
00:02:30
on display at Young Vienna in Bethnal Green.
00:02:33
This is believed to be the first time an out trans artist work
00:02:38
has gone on display in a permanent gallery at the VNA End
00:02:43
of Quotes. So this is to celebrate.
00:02:46
And Zorian Clayton was the curator responsible for this
00:02:49
acquisition. So it is important to set the
00:02:52
record straight, straight and also to be joyful and to
00:02:56
celebrate this state of affairs at the VNA and in the permanent
00:03:03
gallery. But it's also important, I
00:03:08
think, to acknowledge the current climate of erasure of
00:03:12
trans rights and the narrowing of notions of gender.
00:03:18
And so I thought of reading an excerpt of a text Wade wrote for
00:03:23
the summer edition of Art Review, and available in its
00:03:27
entirety there. So as Sarah mentions eloquently
00:03:31
in the interview, we are indeed living at a time where trans and
00:03:35
queer communities are being failed and where gender is being
00:03:40
reduced on a legislative level. So reading a part of Bexwade's
00:03:47
text is to put it out there. It's my voice, but it's their
00:03:51
experience. So stick around for the
00:03:55
interview with Sarah and her fascinating trajectory, and then
00:04:00
to listen to Bexwade's words after the interview.
00:04:05
Without further ado, let's do this.
00:04:07
And thank you for being here. So far, the highest ranking
00:04:17
episodes of the first season and the last season of exhibition
00:04:20
Isters are Philip Guston, Gerhard Heshta, followed by
00:04:25
Marina Abramovic, Dido Mariama, Tanya Kovacs, Yoko Ono, Judy
00:04:31
Chicago and Aria Dean. I would have put my money on
00:04:36
Abramovich, Yoko Ono and Judy Chicago being the most listened
00:04:39
to, especially because they've had so much press coverage and
00:04:43
two of them are two big stars. But oh and also I'm a female
00:04:48
host so I thought you know, more females listen to females, but
00:04:52
no. And you'll be surprised to know
00:04:55
that the majority of listeners to the Abramovich episode are
00:04:59
male. So I can tell you exactly the
00:05:01
percentage. It's 62.5% and 37.5 are female.
00:05:06
And there are non no non binary listeners.
00:05:10
So this is really interesting because in the 8 ones.
00:05:13
So if you don't look at ranking, there's five women and three
00:05:19
men. But what's interesting as well
00:05:21
is in the 12 episodes, we have more women than men.
00:05:26
So that kind of reflects the program as well.
00:05:29
And of course, this is anecdotal.
00:05:32
We all know that to have a real statistical data, you need far
00:05:38
more examples and you need far more numbers.
00:05:41
But it's still interesting. It's just one season, it's just
00:05:44
one experience. But it's interesting to know
00:05:47
that Abramovich coming in 3rd place is really telling because
00:05:52
she's a second generation. She's in the second generation
00:05:56
of feminism, which is a very typical generation of saying, as
00:06:02
she has said that had she had children, she wouldn't have
00:06:06
gotten where she did. Of course she tracked back.
00:06:10
She kind of course corrected on that one.
00:06:13
But it's true that if you think back in and and look at the
00:06:16
artists who made it from that generation, a lot of them had to
00:06:21
kind of what the third generation of feminists have
00:06:25
sort of read into their attitudes.
00:06:29
They kind of went against notions of the female gender.
00:06:35
So for example, being mums was a question counterexample Mary
00:06:40
Kelly that we may talk about. So the reason why I'm mentioning
00:06:44
these analytic results and these very questionable readings, of
00:06:48
course, I'm very conscious of that is because today I have a
00:06:51
special guest. So this is an interview episode.
00:06:54
A new star in the constellation of London galleries, Sarah
00:06:59
Lekong Sung, who has established the gallery in Shoreditch last
00:07:03
year called SLQS and which champions female, queer or non
00:07:09
binary artists. I was intrigued as soon as the
00:07:14
gallery popped up on my exhibitionist's Instagram feed.
00:07:18
So the reason why my curiosity was peaked further is precisely
00:07:23
because Sarah doesn't have your usual career path of art
00:07:27
history, culture management, working at Sotheby's or
00:07:30
Christie's, then working in commercial galleries and
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eventually opening your own gallery.
00:07:35
Which by the way, not many people take that step.
00:07:38
So, you know, dear listeners who are students, build your own
00:07:41
career path. There's a lot of stuff out there
00:07:43
to do. You can be an art advisor.
00:07:45
You can work for funding in big institutions or small ones,
00:07:50
nonprofits. You can do lots of things.
00:07:52
And Sarah did precisely that. So I decided to invite her
00:07:57
because I thought, OK, I'm really interested.
00:07:59
I want to know how exactly she came.
00:08:02
She arrived at Shoreditch. Who was this person?
00:08:05
I thought, and you know, I won't know who she is at the end of
00:08:08
the episode, but a dear listener, I think we're going to
00:08:11
really love listening to what she has to say.
00:08:14
So Sarah is Franco, Vietnamese. She had a multicultural
00:08:19
upbringing. She lived in many places amongst
00:08:22
which Cameroon, UK, France. She studied acting in Paris and
00:08:28
then she came to the UK, to Manchester where she studied
00:08:32
international fine, international business, finance
00:08:36
and economics and then she moved to Dubai where she lived for
00:08:42
eight years and she earned a living in real estate while
00:08:47
taking a keen interest in experimental theatre of all
00:08:51
things. She was Co founder of one of the
00:08:53
city's first experimental theatre companies.
00:08:57
But in her mid 30s with a 2 year old child, she returned to
00:09:01
London for an MA in Performance at Goldsmiths in 2016.
00:09:07
She then became Co director of the charity Procreate Project,
00:09:11
which promotes artist mothers, and through which she curated
00:09:16
the first Mother Art Prize and Oxytocin Birthing the World
00:09:21
Exhibition program. And I'm quoting her here.
00:09:25
She said becoming a mother changed everything.
00:09:28
My schedule, my mobility, my decisions.
00:09:32
Speaking with the Art Newspaper, Le Kangsang said that starting
00:09:36
the gallery brings together the two parallel strands of her
00:09:41
career, a career as an artist and in business.
00:09:45
The gallery was launched on International Women's Day.
00:09:49
Interviewed by Melanie Girlis for the Financial Times, she
00:09:52
described her venture as a long game.
00:09:55
So far the gallery has showcased the work of Bex Wait, a non
00:10:00
binary artist whose work has been acquired by the VNA, which
00:10:04
turned them into the first non binary artist in the collection.
00:10:08
Diana Gravina, Poly Penrose, Ingrid Berton, one Mia
00:10:12
Wilkinson, Kate Williams and currently so the current
00:10:16
exhibition, Vietnamese artists Vicky Do Ho Dang Clergy and
00:10:22
Duong Thai Otui Nguyen. I apologise for the
00:10:26
mispronunciation of the names, surely.
00:10:30
So, Sarah, welcome to the podcast.
00:10:33
I'm really, really happy to have this conversation with you.
00:10:37
Thank you so much. What a power introduction you've
00:10:41
given me. I'm really flattered and really,
00:10:43
really honoured to be on your podcast.
00:10:45
Thank you so much for inviting me.
00:10:47
It's a pleasure because I did go to the gallery.
00:10:49
We had a sort of a meeting and I, we spoke for about an hour
00:10:54
and I just remember leaving the gallery and thinking, well, that
00:10:57
was not enough to answer the question, was this woman?
00:11:01
Why? How did she come here?
00:11:03
But it really, really kind of sparked even more interest.
00:11:07
So I'm going to ask you the first question.
00:11:10
So this is exhibition esters. I'm always interested in knowing
00:11:14
where was your first connection to visual arts?
00:11:17
How did it start? Was it in the family?
00:11:20
Was it later in life? I must have been 8 and my
00:11:22
parents took, took me to the Dali Museum in Girona, in
00:11:29
Figueres. And so, you know, Salvador Dali,
00:11:34
basically there was this municipal theatre that was
00:11:40
destroyed during the Civic War, the Spanish Civic War, civil
00:11:45
war, sorry. And he renovated this theatre.
00:11:49
But the whole, I mean, you know, the whole place is a work of art
00:11:53
and it's a surrealist work of art.
00:11:56
And I went back actually a few years ago because I was just so
00:11:59
struck by this memory. There is a car outside where you
00:12:04
have to feed with people inside and you have to feed it a coin.
00:12:10
And when a coin drops, rain starts raining inside a car.
00:12:16
And I wish I just remember being totally mesmerized by this
00:12:20
impossibility of raining inside and how performative I think,
00:12:26
how performative I think I've, you know, my interest in art has
00:12:29
always been through performance. But I think, yeah, the taste for
00:12:33
experimental also came from when I was 9, my family moved to West
00:12:39
Africa. We moved to Gabon for three
00:12:43
years, and then we moved to Cameroon.
00:12:46
And I was immersed again, you know, thanks to my mother.
00:12:50
She was a cultural journalist and she was fascinated and a
00:12:56
huge supporter of the local art scenes.
00:12:59
So she really introduced me to, I think what I remember is
00:13:04
really being immersed in music, you know, by key African
00:13:09
musicians, you know, like Manu Dibango, Salif Klater, Angelique
00:13:14
de Geoff and Benam. You know, this is also very much
00:13:18
part of my childhood. So quite a classical training,
00:13:21
but then also something, you know, very different.
00:13:25
Being immersed into the cultural richness the West Africa was
00:13:30
also very pivotal in my understanding of the arts.
00:13:34
Is there an exhibition that you can think of when you finally
00:13:38
came to visual arts that sort of made the cut for you, that kind
00:13:43
of like really showed you something new or made you decide
00:13:49
that visual art was really where you wanted to go because you
00:13:52
also have a practice as an artist.
00:13:54
So that probably was a shift there.
00:13:56
I presuming it was an exhibition but might not have been.
00:13:59
It was my experience creating an exhibition with visual artist
00:14:06
that really widened my perspective.
00:14:08
I went back to study at Goldsmiths and I studied
00:14:11
performance making. At the time I had a 2 year old
00:14:14
and then in my second year I was also pregnant with my second
00:14:17
child and I was really looking for other artists who were
00:14:26
mothers or carers at the time. Being a mother was a was a huge
00:14:31
part of my identity. I think I probably felt that my
00:14:36
identity was almost reduced to my mothering responsibilities.
00:14:41
So there's a brilliant library, the Women's Art Library in
00:14:46
Goldsmiths. And Althea who who runs the
00:14:50
library, Althea Grenham, spoke to me about Procreate Project.
00:14:56
And Diana Grovina, she's the founding director of this
00:14:58
organization called Procreate Project, which is a non profit
00:15:01
space that really supports artists for our mothers and
00:15:05
carers through several initiatives.
00:15:08
And when I met her, she had the Mother Mother House studios,
00:15:17
which were artist studios with integrated childcare.
00:15:19
She was piloting this new concept, but we were we we also
00:15:25
started working together on this symposium, which was oxytocin
00:15:28
birthing the world. But what really transitioned me
00:15:31
from performances to the visual art is when she asked me to
00:15:35
create the first Mother Art Prize.
00:15:38
And that was really looking. You know, we had an open call.
00:15:41
It was on the theme of leftovers.
00:15:44
You know what are are your leftovers creatively in terms of
00:15:48
your sexuality, in terms of your identity when you are mothering,
00:15:52
you know what is left unused. Can leftovers be used for your
00:15:57
creativity? There was a winner which was
00:16:00
Mary Martin who won for her film The Divide.
00:16:04
So I think working and creating this exhibition with 22 artists
00:16:09
that I mean, except for Mary Martin's film, were very
00:16:13
different to theatre, Very, very different to performance.
00:16:17
You know, we had sculpture, drawing, photography,
00:16:21
installations, mixed media installations.
00:16:25
That really opened up for me a different world because the
00:16:30
theatre world is very separate I guess to the visual art world.
00:16:36
Performance is striding in between rejecting theatres.
00:16:41
I guess my experience was like, you know, going to Goldsmiths
00:16:44
for two years with like performance.
00:16:46
Live art is essentially rejecting some of the tropes of
00:16:50
performance. It's not acted.
00:16:52
It's very much a lived experience.
00:16:56
And then creating this exhibition really widen even
00:17:01
more my perspective into visual art.
00:17:04
And so in terms of your experience of being of being a
00:17:08
mother and being at Goldsmith's, I'm really interested also if
00:17:13
this experience has had an impact on how you see the art
00:17:20
world as a professional structure.
00:17:21
So like a set of unwritten rules and behaviours that are very
00:17:26
much there, but there aren't spelled out as such, if I may
00:17:31
say. So like it's a life that is not
00:17:34
very conducive to be to having a family.
00:17:36
So did you think about that as well?
00:17:39
And how does that entail then setting up a gallery and in your
00:17:45
gallery do you think about those aspects?
00:17:49
Yes, totally. I mean you know, when I was at
00:17:51
Goldsmiths I used to live in in Bethnal Green and Goldsmiths is
00:17:56
was an hour away from, you know, door to door really.
00:18:00
It took me an hour to get to New Cross.
00:18:03
I had a 2 year old child that was between a Charmander, a
00:18:09
nurse, you know, a nursery. I had a very different life to
00:18:12
the students who were in my course.
00:18:15
You know, they were all living in South London.
00:18:19
They were all hanging out after lectures.
00:18:22
I was just running back and forth.
00:18:24
I was running back and forth. I mean, I had a child that
00:18:27
didn't sleep. I was waking up at 5 trying to
00:18:30
catch up with some work. You know, it was a very
00:18:34
different experience. That's taking me back to so many
00:18:37
memories. That we'll probably try to
00:18:40
forget How. Difficult.
00:18:42
Having young children is, you know, I had access to two
00:18:50
residencies. I had, I did a weekend with the
00:18:56
live art development agency, which was I think the first
00:19:00
weekend I had spent without my child where I could focus
00:19:05
exclusively on thinking and sharing with other participants
00:19:11
in the residency. And then later on a few years
00:19:16
ago, again, I had the opportunity to do a five day
00:19:19
residency with UK new artists in Lincoln.
00:19:22
Again, you know, being child free, being able to think, you
00:19:27
know, because it's very, I found it was just really difficult to
00:19:31
even think or to even have time to think really clearly.
00:19:37
But you know, that's probably the maximum amount of time I
00:19:39
could really go on a residency. You know, I talked to other
00:19:42
artists who work in the gallery who have caring responsibilities
00:19:47
as well. You can't just disappear for one
00:19:50
month. You don't potentially have the
00:19:54
support system and maybe also you don't want to.
00:19:57
And then when I was thinking about opening the art gallery, I
00:20:01
mean, yes, of course, you know, I did think, oh, maybe I could
00:20:03
work in an art gallery for a while.
00:20:07
But I didn't think that was possible.
00:20:08
I didn't think, you know, I, I want to have a life which is
00:20:12
flexible. I want to be able to attend my
00:20:15
children's sports day and the five different Christmas events
00:20:21
that were put on by the schools. From a personal level, I wanted
00:20:24
to create an organization that can be flexible.
00:20:28
I also wanted to set up a gallery that would discuss, you
00:20:34
know, problematic definitions of what is an emerging artist, what
00:20:41
is a mid caring mid career artist.
00:20:47
Can we remove these definitions? I'll remove date of birth for my
00:20:51
artist biographies. I don't think it's relevant.
00:20:54
I don't think it's relevant if you've done X amount of
00:20:57
exhibition by the time you're 30.
00:20:59
Have you been in an institution? I think we need to really
00:21:03
rethink these definitions and be more inclusive by acknowledging
00:21:10
that people have got different career paths.
00:21:14
And if you are, you know, emerging or re emerging because
00:21:19
you emerge in your 20s and then you got busy in your 30s, maybe
00:21:23
you, you know, you're back fully into your artistic practice in
00:21:28
your 40s. You've got a life experience.
00:21:31
But I'm also working with, you know, artists who are younger
00:21:36
and who are asking themselves, what happens to my career if I
00:21:41
have a family, you know, can I work with a gallery that will
00:21:45
support this? You know, and I think these are
00:21:48
really important questions to think about and to have with
00:21:52
collectors. You know, I went to Milan for
00:21:54
Mega Art Fair in April and I was quite surprised by a lot of
00:22:00
collectors asking me how old is this artist?
00:22:02
Because I want to support an emerging artist.
00:22:05
And really, you know, and I really had to to be like, all
00:22:08
right, hold on, let's stop, Let's let's discuss this.
00:22:11
Let's have a conversation. When you move to the market, as
00:22:14
you say, people have really specific expectations of what an
00:22:19
artistic career is. So what you're doing is very
00:22:23
interesting. And now I'm interested in
00:22:24
knowing how the collectors reacted to your spiel.
00:22:30
How did they receive your information?
00:22:33
I think, you know, you can plant seeds, but it will take time.
00:22:37
It will take time to have fundamental shifts in the
00:22:40
market. It will take time.
00:22:43
And I can't be doing this by myself, you know.
00:22:46
So I think it's also widening this conversation with
00:22:50
galleries. Institutions all demand all the
00:22:54
players within the market to really be able to create change.
00:23:00
So, you know, it's one conversation at a time.
00:23:03
I'm really curious as well, because when I saw your gallery
00:23:06
and I saw, you know, the very specific, specific mission you
00:23:11
gave it, I thought that's really courageous because we're living
00:23:14
in a very conservative time in the market.
00:23:18
People are looking at painting a lot, really going back.
00:23:21
It's like the author, this is in literature, Rachel Cusk said,
00:23:26
sometimes I look at the literature around me and the
00:23:29
and, and what's being read and talked about and it's as if
00:23:32
modernism had never happened. And I sometimes think it's as if
00:23:36
conceptualism, that's never happens at times, you know, when
00:23:40
I go to galleries, which great, you know, every, it was very
00:23:42
patriarchal. All movements in the 20th
00:23:44
century were very patriarchal. And I acknowledge that.
00:23:47
But it is true that looking at painting only can be really
00:23:50
conservative as well. And this probably not the
00:23:53
solution either. So I'm really interested in
00:23:55
knowing, you know, why you chose to open a a commercial gallery
00:24:00
in the current climate. So yes, I mean, I worked as an
00:24:05
artist and I work with nonprofits.
00:24:10
That also allowed me to see how much funding was disappearing
00:24:17
and was being removed and how political funding is as well.
00:24:22
So I think that was one of the reason why I set up a commercial
00:24:27
gallery. I decided to really specialized
00:24:33
and really championing women and queer artists because, I mean,
00:24:38
there is plenty of data and statistics that shows you the
00:24:42
gender inequality in the market. You had, you know, the freelance
00:24:47
foundation that did several reports on the representation of
00:24:52
women in specifically in the UK. You had a book by Hetty Judah
00:24:58
which is on how to include, you know, artist parents and, and
00:25:02
and others, which is also a key publication in giving you
00:25:08
statistics as well. There needs to be more research
00:25:13
for career artists as well. And some of this research for
00:25:15
women artists has been removed as well and have stopped.
00:25:18
And that's worrying, you know, that is, you know, that is
00:25:22
worrying that we don't have, you know, a lot of this research
00:25:26
stopped in 2022 and actually win 2025.
00:25:29
And we don't have necessarily up to date statistics, but it's
00:25:34
very, very clear, you know, there is more women than men
00:25:39
entering art education. There is more men represented
00:25:47
and being shown and so earning as well a lot more.
00:25:51
But also in a political time where women and queer rights are
00:25:56
being revoked and in the commercial sector, there is not
00:26:01
that many galleries that say we support women and queer artists.
00:26:05
They might do it through the programming, but they don't say
00:26:10
it. And I think it's important to be
00:26:12
unapologetic about it and to say this is what we're doing because
00:26:16
it's needed. Absolutely.
00:26:18
You know, my daughter just sent me on Instagram a post of a
00:26:23
young woman saying that recently the police has been allowed to
00:26:29
search women's medical history and home if they've had a
00:26:37
miscarriage. Right.
00:26:40
I mean. What does that mean?
00:26:42
And I was also thinking about, you know, lesbian couples who
00:26:46
have children. You know, there's two women in
00:26:50
there, male artists who are parents and who want to parent
00:26:56
fully, you know, with dedication.
00:26:59
Have you come across situations where there's different kinds of
00:27:03
families, where unconventional and non traditional notions of
00:27:07
family with children? Where and what's difficulties do
00:27:13
people face in those situations? You know, on the question of,
00:27:16
you know, non heteronormative families, I think the, I think
00:27:23
with, you know, gender, the importance is not to make a
00:27:29
decision on the behalf of someone else.
00:27:31
I think what we have to do is to be open and to listen to
00:27:38
different experiences. So I'm not here to be able to
00:27:42
define who is a woman, who is queer.
00:27:46
That's not my role. My role is not to define people.
00:27:49
People have to define themselves.
00:27:51
My role is to create a space that feels inclusive.
00:27:55
And I think my role is to create a space where if you are, if you
00:28:01
don't fit the heteronormative or you're not CIS gender, that you
00:28:06
can still be. You can still feel safe, and you
00:28:10
can still feel like this is a space for you.
00:28:13
That takes me to my question about identity, which you've
00:28:18
started talking about. So I don't know if you're
00:28:21
familiar with the this article that many people have been
00:28:24
talking about Dean Kissick's article, which was published in
00:28:30
Harper's Bazaar, about the fact that identity politics are
00:28:33
destroying art and are making us look and curate bad art in
00:28:38
museums. I was wondering if you see any
00:28:41
pitfalls in this question of identity when it comes to the
00:28:44
market? Talking.
00:28:45
So you're talking about the painted protest, right?
00:28:47
By the article by Dean Kissick that was that was published.
00:28:51
Thank you for thank you for saying the title which I forgot.
00:28:55
Yeah, by a few months ago. It's an interesting article
00:28:59
because I think it's missing an important question, and I think
00:29:05
it's missing the question of why are artists making work about
00:29:11
identity. So it's only looking at it from
00:29:15
a viewer's perspective and from this particular, you know, it's
00:29:18
pretty much from Dean's perspective really.
00:29:22
But you know, it's obviously it takes a lot of time for artists
00:29:26
to make work. It's a huge amount of time and
00:29:29
research and experimentation. So why are so many artists
00:29:34
making work about identity? I think this is the question
00:29:38
that we should be asking ourselves.
00:29:41
We have an exhibition that includes Vicki Doe.
00:29:43
It's called Only Your Name and it's about the migration journey
00:29:47
of the Vietnamese diaspora from Vietnam to Hong Kong and then
00:29:52
and then to the UK. It's a very peculiar story
00:29:56
because the Vietnamese diaspora, you know, essentially the reason
00:30:00
we have Vietnamese diaspora here in the UK is because Hong Kong
00:30:04
was a British colony. So that's very interesting to
00:30:07
think about. I was talking to Vicky.
00:30:11
She's based in Saigon. But you know, she said something
00:30:13
that interested me. She said I didn't make after
00:30:15
this film, she didn't make work for six years because she didn't
00:30:20
know what, she didn't know what was important to her anymore.
00:30:26
And I think, you know, if an artist is going to make work, is
00:30:30
going to dedicate so much time and effort into making work,
00:30:35
it's because they think it's important.
00:30:41
And there are some, I think, you know, this is the question we
00:30:43
should be asking. So yes, OK, Dean is fed up with
00:30:47
seeing so many work about identity, but it's obviously
00:30:52
really important for these artists to be making work at
00:30:55
that time. Often I would say artists make
00:31:00
work because it interests them on a micro level.
00:31:02
So it might be based on a personal experience, but then
00:31:06
often, you know, artist will then widen their research onto a
00:31:12
macro level. And so it is a reflection of
00:31:16
society. And I think that in those times
00:31:18
that we are now where identities, you know, are
00:31:22
threatened, you know, trans people are threatened, queer
00:31:27
people are threatened, women's rights are threatened.
00:31:30
I don't think identity work necessarily about identity is
00:31:34
going to do to die down. I think there will be more of it
00:31:39
because maybe there will be less work about identity if if it
00:31:44
wasn't relevant anymore, you know.
00:31:47
But I also think it's interesting because in this
00:31:49
article, he obviously talks about, you know, the Venice
00:31:54
Banali last year on Foreigners Everywhere, which is very much a
00:31:59
retrospective of artists that have been marginalized.
00:32:05
This is a whole new Canon of history of art, which I want to
00:32:10
know about. I don't think this is, but it's
00:32:13
interesting to think about this retrospective and to think about
00:32:17
how we interpret the meaning of this artist now in our
00:32:22
contemporary context, when maybe the artist at the time wasn't
00:32:27
specifically making work about identity.
00:32:30
We see it now as about identity, but maybe that was not the main
00:32:35
goal, the main message. So the last exhibition we had
00:32:40
was a solo exhibition of Becks Wade, who's a trans non binary
00:32:44
photographer who is based in the UK but has documented the queer
00:32:49
community for 20 years. And we showed some of the
00:32:53
earliest work, which was early 2010, queer nightlife
00:32:57
photography. So you put it in the context of
00:33:00
Wendy's image were taken. This was on a personal level
00:33:05
when Bex was finding out about the own queer identity, but also
00:33:10
for the wider community. It was before same sex marriage
00:33:14
was legalized in the US. It was the beginning of the
00:33:18
Obama years, and it felt like a really joyous time, a time of
00:33:24
possibility, a time of change. It feels like a lifetime ago.
00:33:29
Right. So now you Fast forward 15 years
00:33:32
later, we have this exhibition, we have this incredible joyous
00:33:37
pictures, you know, photographs on our wall.
00:33:40
You know three of them, like as you mentioned in the
00:33:42
introduction, were acquired by the Vienna.
00:33:44
So they are of historical significance, a reflection of a
00:33:48
certain time. And, you know, the show opened a
00:33:53
week after, you know, the devastating, you know, Supreme
00:33:57
Court announcement of what the legal definition of a woman is,
00:34:03
which has been exclusive, excluding, you know, trans women
00:34:08
and, and the trans community. And which was decided without
00:34:14
discussion with the trans community, which was taking us
00:34:17
back to a point we were talking about earlier, which is making
00:34:21
decisions on behalf of others, you know, And suddenly these
00:34:26
images on the wall became really political.
00:34:29
There was one particular image, which is called New York Nights,
00:34:32
which was the person. It was taken at a lesbian night.
00:34:37
So a person, presumably, you know, a woman urinating in a
00:34:42
urinal. And, you know, when Becks talks
00:34:44
about making this image, they walked into the toilet.
00:34:47
They were like, oh, sorry. You know, the person was like,
00:34:50
no, great, take a photo. And you know, the way Becks
00:34:54
describe tried it, it was spontaneous, it was joyous, it
00:34:57
was performative, it was a collaboration.
00:35:00
And, you know, 15 years later, you look at it in a context when
00:35:05
we where all the media was obsessed about who's going to be
00:35:09
using which toilet. It almost became, you know,
00:35:12
there's a collector who acquired it.
00:35:14
And you ask him about the market and collectors and, you know,
00:35:17
collectors who acquired Beck's works, Yes.
00:35:20
Are collectors that want to support a trans artist.
00:35:23
There are obviously collectors who are, you know, want to see
00:35:31
queer images as part of the collection, want to include the
00:35:36
queer gaze in the collection. And you know, the collector who
00:35:42
bought this work said this is the image of the year.
00:35:44
There is no other image. And Art Review Commission begs
00:35:49
to write an article about this work, which will be published
00:35:55
soon. So I think there is, yes.
00:35:58
Why are artists making work and how is it being viewed in the
00:36:02
current context and defined eyes identity?
00:36:06
That's fascinating because that's particular definition of
00:36:13
women. I was so taken aback by the fact
00:36:17
that it didn't focus on the trans community as a whole, but
00:36:20
it focused on trans women. And again, it's always that
00:36:25
stigmatization of femininity and the reduction of the notion of
00:36:29
femininity. And I was writing the other day
00:36:32
about something, I mean, notions of gender from the the the
00:36:35
beginning of the century. And I was rereading this text
00:36:38
where Freud was looking at his daughter and was thinking, oh,
00:36:43
women were aren't inventors. You know, women didn't invent
00:36:46
anything. They didn't have the minds for
00:36:48
that. And then he kind of took it back
00:36:51
because Anna Freud was at the loom and he thought himself OK,
00:36:56
Of course, they probably invented the loom because the
00:36:59
pubic hair is hiding their desire for a penis.
00:37:04
So this focus on the genitals is here culturally so much such a
00:37:11
such a critical thinker for our communities and for our society
00:37:14
and for our culture. And at the same time such
00:37:18
terrifying writing about notions of gender.
00:37:21
I was kind of thinking, So what can we do?
00:37:24
So do you, do you have any words to put out there in terms of
00:37:30
institutions? I think the VNA is a great
00:37:33
example. You know, I mean, when when this
00:37:35
acquisition took place with the VNA, they actually received some
00:37:38
money from Art Fund to diversify the collection and to
00:37:43
specifically include a trans artist.
00:37:48
And I think that these pots of fundings are critical and
00:37:56
necessary for institutions to be able to acquire work.
00:38:04
We still need to do a lot of work into diversifying,
00:38:07
diversifying boards of institutions so they reflect
00:38:14
more, you know, our society and also the artistic landscape.
00:38:23
Well, who are the members of the artistic community more than the
00:38:26
artistic landscape? You do you mean the opinion
00:38:30
makers, the the people who have like power in those, like
00:38:34
decisional power in those institutions, Yeah.
00:38:37
Yeah, absolutely. I think in terms of decisional
00:38:39
power, we need to have, you know, I mean, obviously the, you
00:38:45
know, the curator Zion Clayton, who was responsible for this
00:38:50
acquisition for Beckswaid, is part of making the queer and
00:38:55
trans community. And so we need more diverse
00:38:59
voices when it comes to institutions, not just, you
00:39:03
know, at the artist level, but at the curatorial level, but
00:39:06
also at the managing level and board of direct, you know, board
00:39:12
members of institutions that have got huge soft powers.
00:39:16
So we need diversity across across the board.
00:39:22
I think with, you know, the state of the public funding at
00:39:24
the moment, I think that private collectors have a huge role to
00:39:30
play and. Agreed.
00:39:34
Agreed on all. Yes, absolutely.
00:39:37
I mean, you know, it's interesting.
00:39:39
We had, I was part of the London Gallery Weekend this weekend,
00:39:45
which is great. It's an event, you know, that
00:39:48
invites 125 galleries to participate and to put on events
00:39:52
all weekend. You know, we had an artist walk
00:39:54
through, we had a tour with Martin Clark at the gallery.
00:39:59
It was a real moment of activation, but it was also a
00:40:03
real moment of meeting institutions.
00:40:08
So London Gallery Weekend again has got funding to be able to
00:40:13
invite international curators. To come to London.
00:40:17
And so I met, you know, international curators in
00:40:21
countries where there is no public funding.
00:40:23
So I know we complain about our, you know, how much our public
00:40:28
funding is decreasing, but actually there are countries
00:40:31
that has, that has no art council or that has no public
00:40:35
funding at all. And there, you know, patronage,
00:40:40
private institutions, private collections have a big role in
00:40:47
making sure that all artists are supported, making sure that all
00:40:54
genders are supported and trying to rebalance that, you know,
00:40:59
gender inequality, which is in the market.
00:41:02
Can you unveil a little bit what you're thinking about in terms
00:41:05
of the future of the program of the gallery?
00:41:08
Yeah, sure. I mean, we, we have a solo
00:41:13
exhibition that's going to be in the autumn with Damaris Athene,
00:41:17
who's actually the work that you can see behind me.
00:41:20
Well, that's part of one of her series called Leighton Space.
00:41:23
And yes, I think I'm really looking forward to Damaris
00:41:27
because she's incredibly ambitious in her vision.
00:41:30
And this is going to be her first solo exhibition in a, you
00:41:34
know, in a commercial gallery. I've been following and I've
00:41:37
been part of her journey for a long time.
00:41:41
She was part of my first exhibition in a physical space
00:41:45
on Chondrit St. last June and then I showed her at the Women
00:41:50
Art Fair. I took her work in Mega, which
00:41:53
was incredibly well received and all placed within private
00:41:57
collections. So to be able to now be able to
00:42:00
say, right, well, we've done all that journey and now you know,
00:42:05
you've got this space to do a solo exhibition is I think it's
00:42:11
it's yes, it's great collaborative process.
00:42:15
She creates incredible installation and sculptures made
00:42:20
of fabric and glass. And, you know, her research goes
00:42:25
incredibly in details and is about interspecies relationship,
00:42:32
specifically in the underwater world, trying to make us think
00:42:36
outside of bodies, trying to make of to make, trying to make
00:42:40
us view our body matter reality differently through, yeah,
00:42:44
intersection with other species, but also the digital.
00:42:48
So I'm really excited about that.
00:42:50
Again, I've got another solo show with Kate Williams, who was
00:42:54
part of the first exhibition here in February against an
00:42:59
incredible ambitious project. Kate creates large scale fabric
00:43:05
work and she's going to create a an installation in the gallery.
00:43:10
I can't tell you much more because I want to keep it.
00:43:13
It's so exciting. But yes, it's basically going to
00:43:16
be, I guess, an immersive space where the gallery floors,
00:43:19
ceilings, you know, will be she will create a cocoon
00:43:24
essentially. And she plays a lot with
00:43:26
perspective. I showed her work in, in, in
00:43:31
Mega in Milan, which was probably 1 of definitely the
00:43:34
favourites of the fair because she plays a lot with illusions
00:43:39
and perfect and perspective. And she, she describes her works
00:43:43
as delicious. She invites you to enter a
00:43:47
delicious illusion world, which yeah, is, is is exciting.
00:43:53
And obviously I'm also looking at art fairs in London and also
00:43:59
internationally. Are you thinking of representing
00:44:03
artists? Are you going to work in a in a
00:44:05
sort of a traditional model, or are you trying to reinvent the
00:44:08
model a little bit? No, I'm looking to represent
00:44:12
artists. I mean, so far I am working with
00:44:15
artists, which is flexible in a way where, you know, works are
00:44:21
consigned, but if there are other opportunities for artists
00:44:24
to show their work, opportunities are discussed.
00:44:27
And essentially I think that, you know, if you're an artist
00:44:31
entering the commercial art world, it's probably beneficial
00:44:34
for you to be working with different galleries.
00:44:36
It's beneficial for the galleries as well.
00:44:38
So I'm also working with, you know, collaborative models.
00:44:43
I'm taking Diana Taylor, one of the artists who was exhibiting
00:44:47
my first exhibition, to do a solo show in LA in July with
00:44:51
another gallery which opened recently as well called Don't
00:44:54
Look Project. So it's also about, you know,
00:44:57
what opportunities I can find internationally, which is not a
00:45:02
fair, which is a collaboration with other galleries.
00:45:07
I do want to represent artists and I will be representing
00:45:10
representing artists either by the end of this year or the
00:45:13
beginning of next year. That I think it's important to
00:45:17
take my time and for both me and the artist to test the
00:45:23
relationships before engaging into representation.
00:45:31
And that is through doing RIP exhibition or doing solo
00:45:34
exhibition or art fairs together before fully committing to, you
00:45:40
know, representation. I think that that building a
00:45:42
relationship with the gallery is a very, very important aspect of
00:45:47
the work. It really is.
00:45:48
And it sounds like you're really doing it slowly, steadily, and
00:45:53
with lots of consideration and dedication.
00:45:57
So that's really, you know, something to appreciate.
00:46:00
So thank you so much, Sarah, for your generosity.
00:46:05
It was really fabulous to listen to you and to know more about
00:46:10
your experience, to follow you and to keep on following you
00:46:13
after the episode. So do you have any call outs
00:46:17
that you want to leave out there for any of your projects?
00:46:20
This is the moment. And then we'll just say goodbye.
00:46:24
Thank you so much for having me. It's been such a pleasure to
00:46:27
talk to you. So we currently have an
00:46:30
exhibition called Only Your Name, which I mentioned early
00:46:33
on. It has three artists from
00:46:35
Vietnamese descent, Vicky Do, who is on clergy and Zhong Chun
00:46:40
Guiyen. It's on until the 12th of July,
00:46:44
so please come through. We open Thursday, Friday,
00:46:47
Saturday, 12 till 6. Also open by appointment.
00:46:51
Follow us on Instagram. So we'll be closed for August,
00:46:54
but we will be opening an online screening room which is curated
00:47:03
by Florence, also Fitzgerald, and which is going to be
00:47:07
focusing on interspecies relationships, looking at work,
00:47:13
which are either documentation of performance or that include
00:47:18
performativity. So Flow is creating a really
00:47:22
exciting programme which is going to be going on for six
00:47:25
months, where each month an artist film is featured and
00:47:29
available online, which really is about extending the programme
00:47:34
outside the gallery walls. So, yeah, we can also sign up to
00:47:38
our newsletter to be able to get more information on that.
00:47:42
Amazing. I already did and you should.
00:47:44
So thank you so much, Sarah. Thank you for doing this with
00:47:48
us. It was a great pleasure.
00:47:51
And you out there, I hope you're doing very well.
00:47:53
Thank you for listening. Sign up for our newsletter as
00:47:56
well. Sign up for all newsletters.
00:47:58
I mean, you know, we put so much, so much love into those.
00:48:02
So do that as well for exhibition esters.
00:48:04
And I hope you're having a great time and I'll be with you in two
00:48:09
weeks. Thank you so much.
00:48:11
Bye bye. Bye.
00:48:12
Thank you. All right, so as promised, I am
00:48:15
going to read an excerpt of the text written by Bexwade for art
00:48:21
review for the current issue, Summer 2025.
00:48:27
I encourage you to get your hands on it so that you can read
00:48:30
the whole text. So I am going to read the last
00:48:35
part of the text a little bit further than the middle.
00:48:40
So here goes, Becks Wade for art review.
00:48:48
There's a difference between being visible and being
00:48:50
witnessed, A distinction I return to often in my work.
00:48:56
Documentary photography, at its most human, isn't just about
00:49:00
observation, it's about responsibility.
00:49:05
It doesn't just look, it listens.
00:49:08
It stays. It becomes a kind of testimony
00:49:12
not shaped by spectacle but by solidarity, by trust, and by the
00:49:17
ethics of presence. Visibility may bring exposure,
00:49:22
but exposure isn't empathy. To be visible is to be seen.
00:49:28
To be witnessed is to be felt. I've often said visibility does
00:49:33
not equal safety, and I believe that now more than ever, my
00:49:39
photographs aren't always made as declarations for the outside
00:49:43
world, even if they're sometimes received that way.
00:49:46
They're often gestures inward. I photograph from within the
00:49:51
queer and trans community. As someone who shares the
00:49:54
spaces, who has danced the nights, and who now marches the
00:49:58
protests and prides. I carry their same fears.
00:50:03
It's why I speak not of capturing moments, but of
00:50:06
creating them together. Every image is built on trust,
00:50:12
on shared understanding, on consent.
00:50:16
And that consent is all-encompassing.
00:50:20
It's at the heart of my work because I ask whether someone is
00:50:25
alone in a crowd or up a tree, as happened recently at a trans
00:50:30
protest I was documenting for British Vogue.
00:50:34
Our community is so often treated as if we don't deserve
00:50:38
autonomy in how we're acted towards, spoken about or
00:50:42
legislated upon. That truth was laid bare by the
00:50:47
Supreme Court's ruling, which passed judgement on trans lives
00:50:51
without hearing a single trans voice.
00:50:55
It's a pattern. We are debated, defined,
00:50:59
regulated, but rarely asked what we need, how we want to live or
00:51:04
how we seek to be protected. My work insists that trans and
00:51:09
queer people have the right to decide how they are seen,
00:51:13
whether they are seen at all. I've always thought of my
00:51:17
photographs as a living archive, not static records, but moments
00:51:23
full of breath and contradiction.
00:51:26
They say we will not be legislated out of public life,
00:51:31
nor erased from public memory. In moments like this, when the
00:51:37
law fails us, when public discourse turns cold, art can
00:51:41
become a shelter, not one of retreat but of resistance, a
00:51:47
space where we write ourselves back into history, where we care
00:51:51
for each other in public, where we refuse the terms we've been
00:51:55
given. But still there is joy.
00:51:58
Still there is that image in the nightclub bathroom.
00:52:02
Still there are people protesting from treetops.
00:52:05
Still there is a dance floor. Still we persist, not despite
00:52:09
our complexity, but because of it.
00:52:13
I don't take photos to prove we exist.
00:52:16
I take them because we do. These were the words of Beck's
00:52:23
Wade for Art review. Bex Wade is a photographer based
00:52:28
in the UK and it has been my honor to share their words with
00:52:33
you. Thank you so much for being
00:52:36
here, for allowing me to be in your eardrums, and I hope that
00:52:42
in the following two weeks until the next episode, you will be
00:52:46
out there in the world, fabulous, having fun, having
00:52:51
respect for yourself and for others and being great.
00:52:55
Thank you so much to those who made this episode possible.
00:53:00
Shout out to Vita Hebb who assisted me in this episode,
00:53:07
particularly in the edition. So if you're on Spotify or
00:53:11
YouTube and if you want to have a look at the images and the
00:53:14
works we talk about, you can always go back and revisit the
00:53:19
video. You can go to our Instagram
00:53:20
account where we also have images of the works we mention.
00:53:26
You can also follow SLQS on Instagram.
00:53:30
You can follow us Exhibition Esters, under score podcasts.
00:53:33
So that's it. This is the end of the episode.
00:53:37
Take care, have a good one. Exhibition Esters is an indie
00:53:45
podcast with its perks and its productive challenges, but I'm
00:53:50
very thankful to be in your eardrums or somewhere in your
00:53:53
screens. Don't forget to support
00:53:55
independent content. Give us a nice rating, subscribe
00:53:58
to the newsletter, and if you can, click on the show's notes
00:54:02
or go to our website and buy us a latte.
00:54:05
Thank you for being here, thank you for supporting us, thank you
00:54:09
for listening. Have a good one.