In celebration of Sydney WorldPride 2023, Artereal Gallery is excited to present Keepsake an online group exhibition that pays homage to the ideas of mementos, souvenirs and reminders.
Sydney WorldPride will connect a global audience to Australia’s immense creativity and talent. During this period, more than 500,000 people will be expected to participate in the festival, with the majority visiting from interstate and internationally. Keepsakes are often seen as insignificant trinkets, yet they play an important role in memory-making, how we see ourselves, and our relationships with people and places.
They are complex psychological, sociological, and anthropological artefacts ranging from the poignant to the marvellously kitsch and eccentric. These treasures travel globally, becoming familiar mementos of precious memories and tokens of love and affection.
Keepsake offers a way to transform the intangible into the tangible. Central to this exhibition is a study in the representation of ‘high meets low,’ how decorative and ornamental art forms can often be seen as ‘other.’ How kitsch and camp’s historic position as ‘other’ to fine art, might intersect with diverse gender identities and sexualities.
The exhibition is intended to be fun, playful and joyous, allowing a showcase of both represented Artereal Gallery and invited Artists.
Curated by Tané Andrews
(To view and purchase artworks from this series, including pricing details,
scroll to the end of this online exhibition page).
Lionel Bawden.
“In terms of themes, I am most interested in joy and queerness, with a little subversion amidst a tender sensibility.”
– Lionel Bawden 2022
Lionel Bawden was born in Auburn, NSW in 1974 and currently lives and works in Northern NSW. Bawden has a Masters of Fine Arts, Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney University (2015) and a Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours (painting) from the Australian National University Institute of the Arts, Canberra School of Art, Canberra (1997).
Bawden has exhibited widely both within Australia and internationally. His work is held in major public and private collections including the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Newcastle Region Gallery, Newcastle, NSW, Artbank, and Macquarie Bank collection.
Liam Benson.
Liam Benson is a performance artist who documents his work through embroidery, photography, video and new media. Benson’s work deconstructs the social perceptions of gender, race, culture, sexuality and identity by cross-referencing art, popular culture and media language.His work serves to celebrate the evolution of these social archetypes and explore the possibilities within the cross influence of socially entrenched identities and cultural and sub-cultural amalgamation.
Commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia for the Jackson Bella Room, 2019. This work was made in collaboration with the NSW RDA Association. Read more here.
This work will be reshown at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre in October 2023.
Dennis Golding.
Dennis Golding is a Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay artist from the north west of NSW and was born and raised in Sydney. Working in a range of mixed media including painting, video, photography and installation, Golding critiques the social, political and cultural representations of race and identity. His practice is drawn from his own experiences living in urban environments and through childhood memories.
George Goodnow.
George Goodnow is a multidisciplinary artist based in Naarm (Melbourne). Their practice ranges from painting and public murals, to sculpture and site-specific installations. By fabricating fictional architectures and objects, or adjusting existing architectures, George considers how spaces reflect, orientate and hold bodies. Their work focuses on relationships to urban built environments to explore ideas of gender, binaries and queer methodologies. George has produced public art projects with Collingwood Yards, SIGNAL, Ki Smith Gallery New York, AMBUSH Gallery, the ANU and many local councils. Their work has also been featured at Something Unlimited Festival, Art Not Apart, Sydney Sexual Health Centre, Melbourne Fringe Festival, SpiltMilk Festival, Wollongong Art Gallery and Platform Arts in Geelong.
George Goodnow Cubicle Door, 2023 image below by Nicole Reed.
Owen Leong.
Owen Leong is a contemporary artist working with sculpture, photography, video and performance. He uses personal mythologies to explore systems of power, culture and representation. His artworks employ forces of creation and destruction to investigate the cyclical nature of order and chaos, and to reflect more universal aspects of human nature.
Leong’s work has been exhibited widely in Australia and internationally including the Art Gallery of New South Wales; Art Gallery of South Australia; Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre; Monash Gallery of Art; 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art; Singapore Art Museum; Today Art Museum, Beijing; Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai; OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen; and the National Museum of Poznan, Poland.
Athena Thebus.
Athena Thebus is an artist whose work deconstructs desire. She has presented solo and collaborative work at Next Wave Festival, Liveworks, Sugar Mountain Festival, Campbelltown Arts Centre, ACE Open, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA), and Verge Gallery. Most recently, she was shortlisted in the 2020 Churchie Emerging Art Prize, presented at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.
View all of artworks below.
All prices are in Australian dollars and inclusive of GST. Freight costs not included. Prices are correct at the time of publication but may be subject to change without notice.
Please contact the gallery for assistance with sales, framing and freight enquiries.