Unbecoming exhibition opening at La Trobe Art Institute

Artists: James Barth, Neve Curnow, Alicia Frankovich, Matthew Harris, Yvette James, Callum McGrath and Keemon Williams

Please join us for the opening of Unbecoming, guest curated by Tim Riley Walsh. The opening will start with some floor talks from Tim Riley Walsh and exhibiting artists Keemon Williams, Alicia Frankovich, Callum McGrath and Yvette James. This will be followed by an opening celebration with drinks and refreshments.

Unbecoming examines the ‘queer gothic’, characterising it through dark, horror-tinged imagery and themes; states of collapse and decomposition; and a focus on isolation and the individual. These themes are posed as counter-narratives to more dominant and typical framings of queerness through emergence, togetherness and communality.

Unbecoming is a group exhibition of new and recent works presented across La Trobe Art Institute. The exhibition argues for the importance of new subcultural positions within queerness in an era in which the queer movement is threatened by its subsumption within popular culture. The exhibition considers how these subcultures’ derivations are generative, creating an antagonistic resistance to queerness’ increasingly monolithic status.

Unbecoming considers regional communities as particularly fertile spaces for subcultures to develop, featuring the work of a number of artists with ties to regional communities. The exhibition considers how difference is accentuated outside of population hubs, and how the position of being ‘away from the centre’ is felt both spatially and culturally.