As divine messengers, guides and intermediaries between the living and the dead, queer angels proliferate the work of the 1980s and 1990s and appear to be making a resurgence in the contemporary moment. It is the lesbian incarnation of these spectral service deities that is of particular interest within my own research. They not only embody the temporally and figuratively liminal qualities mentioned above, but also evoke something of the queer subcultural epithet “service dyke.” Arguably one of the most consummate and evocative examples of this is the photographic series, Angelic Rebels: Lesbians and Safer Sex (1989) by the UK artist Tessa Boffin. […]
Thelma & Louise Go Down | Runway Journal
In 1991, two women in a ‘66 Ford Thunderbird drive off a cliff.
This is the final sequence of the film, Thelma & Louise; a film about two small-town working-class women turned outlaws, set against the backdrop of the American Mid-West. With the long arm of the law at their backs, they choose to keep going.
Thelma and Louise Go Down is a piece of alt fanfiction with a queer theory twist. It proposes that Thelma and Louise did not die when they drove off the cliff but kept going. More specifically, that they did descend, but this descent was a katabatic passage through to the underworld where the queer (un)dead reside.
Subtextual and subterranean, Thelma and Louise cruise the eternal dyke bar making kin with their queer (un)dead comrades, denizens who trade in knowing looks and converse in innuendo.
Instead of doing time, they choose to go down and stay down.
Braving Time: Contemporary Art in Queer Australia | MEMO Review
Braving Time: Contemporary Art in Queer Australia is, as curator Richard Perram asserts, a show “about contemporary art in queer Australia” and not “an exhibition of queer art in contemporary Australia.” As I attempt to unpick the subtle sematic differences between these two frameworks, I wonder if they aren’t really one and the same. Is the curatorial objective of foregrounding queer subjectivity and worlds in Australia and Australian art not also an exercise in queering contemporary art and Australia? I’ve barely made it past the introductory wall text and my mind is already whirring with unanswered questions. […]
The Look Back, Spence Messih | Framework: #18 Constraint
The series of works in Spence Messih’s The Look Back at Alaska Projects vibrate between minimalist materiality and covert queer semiotics. The trans-identity operates at the pitch of a low hum, imperceptible at first, until its resonance makes clear the queer becomings residing within the works. […]
“She wants me to fist a fish?”: the pleasure of queer subtext in Xena Warrior Princess | Queer PowerPoint: World Pride Edition (Sydney)
A performance lecture presenting the case for subtext as a vital queer artistic methodology, and the state of “being subtextual” as inherent to queer subjectivity and the practice of living a queer life. In this talk, I turn to the cult 1990s fantasy television series Xena Warrior Princess as the consummate example within contemporary popular culture.
Jade chatted with artist and Out of Bounds podcast host Caoife Power about one of her research idée fixes, the film Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Dir. Celine Sciamma, 2019). The podcast includes a reading of ‘Falling backward into the future: art, memory and queering time in Portrait of a Lady on Fire’.
In Conversation: Macon Reed & Jade Muratore | UNSW Galleries (Sydney)
Artist Macon Reed discusses their work, Eulogy for the Dyke Bar, an immersive installation that revisits the legacy of lesbian and dyke bars. Together with artist and researcher, Jade Muratore, they discuss the circumstances which have seen the closure of dyke bars globally and delve into the stories behind archival material included in the installation from lesbian parties, spaces and events gone by.
She’s Lost Control [Hissy Fit] | You Are Here Festival (Canberra)
She’s Lost Control is a lecture-performance exploring the action of headbanging through its dual somatic relationship to the performance of hysteria and the contemporary rock, punk, and heavy metal music culture of the MTV generation.
Hissy Fit tie together live performance, video, queer theory and psychoanalysis in this performative lecture.