The exhibition You Are Here, held at Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art in 1992, stands as one of the most significant shows in the history of queer Australian art. Bringing together the work of 11 gay male artists working across sculpture, painting and photography, it gave an unprecedented platform to queer representation amid the AIDS/HIV crisis of the time.
Something of a redux, You Are Here Too is both homage to, and expansion of, that original exhibition 33 years on, featuring a range of contemporary queer artists. With the blessing of the 1992 curators, Scott Redford and Luke Roberts, curators KINK, a cross-disciplinary art collective, have produced a show that, they say, “looks urgently at threads that take the same impulse of Scott and Luke’s, [depicting] the complexities of gay life, and updating it to a more inclusive queer place.”
“We think the exhibition will illustrate the incredible diversity of queer expression in this country currently—how creativity is being applied to ask vital questions about Australian life, and queer Australia’s central place within this.”
“This was an exhibition that still felt rich and also felt ready to be reappraised,” the collective adds. “We wanted to look at how queer sex and desire is being imaged, embodied and expressed by today’s artists in this context—and to look at who had been left out of the original exhibition. It was time to ask: what is queer desire now?”
KINK, whose research focus is on the history of Australian LGBTQIA+ art, have taken particular care to explore how queer sexuality intersects with issues of work and labour, politics, public spaces, nightlife and more. Additionally, a crucial updating of You Are Here pertains to First Nations identity and the trans experience.
“We think the exhibition will illustrate the incredible diversity of queer expression in this country currently—how creativity is being applied to ask vital questions about Australian life, and queer Australia’s central place within this.”
You Are Here Too
Institute of Modern Art
12 April—29 June
This article was originally published in the March/April 2025 print edition of Art Guide Australia.
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