We don’t have to be the Building – Boosted!

My current project, ‘We don’t have to be the Building’, is exciting (and terrifying!) for me because it brings together my art making practice, writing, and community engagement, in a new form of research and public presentation.

I am looking at queer activism around Homosexual law Reform 30 years ago, and what queer activism is today. I’m looking for my own whakapapa through layers of written, drawn, and embodied history. Some of it is challenging, beautiful, sad and brave, and there’s still so much to fight for. I want to represent it all as a series of many truths all together, and they will be in the lightboxes on Courtenay Place from 1^st August.

It’s a huge process. I am looking through the Lesbian and Gay archives, interviewing activists from then and now, drawing people, running hui, discussions and doing interviews. I’m generating both academic and what I’m calling embodied research – creating intimacy through korero and presence in drawing and making together across identities and generations.

Much of queer activism is based in telling our intimate stories, about our bodies, and our sexualities. It’s brave, challenging and vital work. This project will show some of my story, and those of others. It will weave together an assemblage of art making and writing not to create answers, but to offer diverse truths and experiences through drawing, collage, photography, and words.

Every part of this project is both an offer and a call out, to see who answers. I’m reaching out to my community, in all its diversity, fragmentation and glory. For a fairly private studio artist, it’s incredibly vulnerable, but I know it’s the right thing to do, and that I have all the skills to do it. But I do need a little help.

I have been generously funded by Wellington City Council, Creative New Zealand, Rainbow Wellington, and The Armstrong and Arthur Trust, so my production costs are covered, but I need help to create time for myself to do it all. I need to work on this between now and August, so I’m asking for $7500 through a Boosted campaign to support me which you can find here;

http://www.boosted.org.nz/projects/we-dont-have-to-be-the-building

Boosted is a funding platform for the arts run by The Arts Foundation. Any donation you make is fully tax deductable.