Exhibition: Queer British Art

I went to the Queer British Art exhibition at the Tate Britain on Friday 22nd September. I found it to be a very good exhibition because it was beneficial in giving me a context for Queer art which is a predominant theme throughout my own work. The exhibition was structured into 8 different rooms which each explored a theme. I found each room very interesting so I shall write about each of them with the pieces I found inspiring to me.

1. Coded Desires– the themes were subtle in the paintings and sculpture in this room. It did not have any particular relevance to my own work but I found it good to see initial pieces of Queer art.
2. Public Indecency– some homosexuality was shown within society and art but some was not. There was new terminologies and approaches to the self. I was particularly  inspired by Cecil Beaton in particular his piece ‘Sylvia Townsend Warner’ (1930). He took photos of literary people. This has inspired me to think about taking photos of people who are queer or have and invisible illnesses and ask them about their lives. Furthermore, in this room I also found the piece ‘Radcliffe Hall’ by Charles Hall to be very interesting because the photo is of a woman who was in the gentry and she is presented as dressing in a masculine/androgenous way. Oscar Wilde’s prison door was also shown in this room. A viewer at the gallery wrote ‘Oscar Wilde’s prison door: locking us up to keep us all in the closet. But we found the key’.
3. Theatrical Types- Angus McBean took photos of queer actors. Oliver Messel was a stage designer and his sets ‘his fascination with dandyish excess, pastiche and artifice has been interpreted as a queer aesthetic’.
4. Bloomsbury– This room was about the Bloomsbury Literary Group. There were works created by them. Duncan Grant’s piece ‘PC Harry Daley’ is of a policeman and juxtaposes his job and personal life.
5. Defying Convention– Claude Cahun explored the situational nature of gender ‘neuter is the only gender that suits me’. The piece ‘Composition in Yellow, Black and White’ (1949) intrigued me because it is an abstract piece on identity . He stated ‘I destroyed my own personality and created a new one’.
6. Arcadia and Soho
7. Public and Private Lives– explored the contradictions of queer life in the 1950/60s. John Deakin ‘when I take a photograph it is to make a revelation about it. So my sitters turn into my victims’. I like the idea of having a ‘revelation’ whilst taking a photograph-finding out something about yourself and/or another.
8. Francis Bacon and David Hockney

To conclude, there was a bit at the end of the exhibition where the visitors could leave a postcard for others to read on their thoughts of what they had seen. I thought that this was very effective in audience participation and feedback on the exhibition.