Performance and book launch: Scotty So and Chunxiao Qu

Performance: Let no one sleep by Scotty So

Hong Kong-born, Melbourne-based artist Scotty So’s visual and performance work is driven by the subversive potential of camp – an often-contradictory mix of humour and sincerity.

Scotty will lead a roving drag performance that combines traditional costumes from Chinese opera with an acapella version of Signore, ascolta! by Giacomo Puccini. The recording of this aria was commissioned by Scotty and performed by Filipino soprano Mavel Bautista. Guided by Scotty, and accompanied by the ghostly presence of Mavel Bautista’s voice, we will depart from Bendigo Art Gallery, cross View Street and eventually arrive at La Trobe Art Institute. This work is a layered expression of cultures, histories, and the performance of gender, explored through queer sensibilities.

Book launch: This poetry book is too good to have a name & Logic poetry by Chunxiao Qu

China-born artist and poet Chunxiao Qu's first large-scale public artwork on the La Trobe Art Institute View Street façade originated in her writing. Join us to celebrate the publication of Chunxiao’s second book. Together with co-editors Helen Hughes and Amy Stewart and contributing writer Juhani Yli-Vakkuri, Chunxiao will present a reading and discussion. The new book is published by Discipline.

Dr Helen Hughes is founding co-editor of Discipline, and a member of the editorial boards of Memo Review and Index Journal. She is a senior lecturer in Art History, Theory and Curatorial Practice at Monash University.

Amy May Stuart is a Japanese Australian artist who completed her Master of Fine Art at Monash University in 2022. Amy May’s practice is multidisciplinary. Through painting, photography, installation and writing, her work explores art forgery and the parafictional – the space between fictional and real. Amy May has recently exhibited in Melbourne artist-run galleries and at Disneyland Paris. She writes for Memo Review, founded the online journal Lieu Journal and is an editorial assistant at the journals Discipline and Parrhesia.

Dr Juhani Yli-Vakkuri is a philosopher who lives in Naarm/Melbourne and works at the Australian Catholic University. He is an author whose notable works include The bounds of possibility (with Cian Dorr and John Hawthorne, 2022) and Narrow content (with John Hawthorne, 2018). Juhani is currently working with Z Goodsell on a book titled Logical foundations, which proposes a new system of formal logic to replace the standard systems that evolved in the early 20th century.

Image: Scotty So, Let no one sleep, performance, Rising, Melbourne, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and MARS Gallery