Sexes (Exhibition)

Overview

Simple, short and often filthy. The Sexes Festival’s accompanying exhibition, created by Performance Space, is an absorbing series of meditations along the sidelines of sex, with occasional excursions into the priapic. The most obviously theoretical piece is a five track sound installation in the foyer, Like a Prayer (Justify my Love) by Jess Olivieri and Parachutes for Ladies, which sings simultaneously in operatic swoon, bassy refrain and solemn thinking, reflecting on gay marriage and gender.

Paul Knight’s (NSFW) Falling Sideways from the Chamber Music series (NSFW) makes a similar point less directly. It’s the most explicit piece in the show and also the most casually intimate. Falling Sideways a slide show of random moments from a relationship (in fact, it is Paul Knight’s own.) There are slides of plated food, scrabble games and intimate sex between two naked blokes. The piece would be essentially pornographic, but the inclusion of fish and chips, scrabble boards and random embraces mean it feel like rifling through a couple’s intimate snaps. Moments of sex, moments of relaxation. Each are given equal weight. Each reflects equally the love in the relationship. A soundtrack pulses in the room, like a heartbeat.

Luke Parker and Sangeeta Sandrasegar’s Exquisite Corpse uses the classic dada art game to make body collages whose appealing frankenart arrives at mismatched, serpentine forms which snap together into Beardsley-curve shapes. Around the corner, Tracey Moffatt and Gary Hillberg collect big screen films with couples from different ethnicities getting it on in Other. The videos cut between films like Mutiny on the Bounty, Interview with the Vampire and the King and I. Dance, travel and passion are all nearly interweaved with a rising bass soundtrack suggesting looming drama or disaster. Which, most likely, rests in the viewer’s opinion of colonialism, orientalism and/or sincere shagging.

In the foyer Cigdem Aydemir’s artistic series of progressively more absurd objects draped in niquabs reaches its z-axis apogee as an entire belt drive system (aka a Carriageworks corridor) gets cocooned in black for Site Occupied 2. A pair of eyes peek out from above the corridor mouth, luring you to wander down its enveloping walls. Hook around the loos at the end, and look out for Philip Brophy’s video triptych Stadium on the way back.

Afternoon live art performances will take place in situ throughout the season. Check the program for details. The show is open 10-6, 10-8 on evenings of performances. Image shows Glitterface by Liam Benson.