Queer Spaces: London, 1980s – Today
Excerpts from press releases
Queer Spaces: London, 1980s – Today
2 April – 25 August 2019
Gallery 4, Whitechapel Gallery, London
How has the changing landscape of London affected the lives of queer people? This exhibition considers the loss of hundreds of community venues around London through market-led redevelopment and how this has changed the capital’s queer scene. It presents work by artists concerned with the disappearance of spaces where LGBTQ+ communities have gathered to socialise, explore their sexuality and try out new identities. Featuring rarely displayed archive material relating to the city’s queer spaces, gathered through extensive research by University College London’s Urban Laboratory. With works by Tom Burr (b. 1963, USA), Ralph Dunn (b.1969, UK), Evan Ifekoya (b.1988, Nigeria), Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings (both b. 1991, UK) and Prem Sahib (b. 1982, UK) on show, the exhibition explores the radical inventiveness, creativity and unpretentiousness inherent within London’s queer spaces.
Art Night 2019 Performance by Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings
Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings’ work for for the London ArtNight festival centres on themes of queerness and resistance, an increasingly difficult cultural landscape amidst the closure of queer venues, austerity and the buying out of community spaces in the UK. They will create ‘a musical spectacle that brings together musical genres including classical orchestral music, disco, House, High NRG and Pop, into a single dramatic vision performed and centred around a Pride float’ which will travel up the Walthamstow Market June 22, 2019, 7pm-12am.
About Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings
Mouse Magasine writes about the artist duo’s creative practice as seen at a recent exhibition in the New York Gallery, Queer Thoughts, ‘in the collaborative practice of London-based artists Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, the appearances of LGBTQ culture are evaluated, in both their establishment and clandestine forms (…). Utilizing drawing and digital video (and their intersection in digital animation), the works of Quinlan and Hastings serve as both a document of, and proposition for, the social spaces of queer life.’ Both artists are b. 1991, Newcastle / London, United Kingdom and have their BA(Hons) Fine Art degrees from Goldsmiths College, University of London, 2013/2014.
Related Link
Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings interviewed by Rosanna Mclaughlin