Don’t Forget to Remember: An HIV-centred viewing of QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection

It is hard to overstate the impact that HIV has had on the queer community. From the beginning of the HIV epidemic art has served a vital role as one of the few spaces that allowed for the public expression of the impact of HIV.

Discover artworks that explore the intertwining of HIV with queer cultural expressions and the pain, rage, sadness, loss and humour that exist within those histories.

HIV+ activist and writer Nic Holas joins NGV Senior Curator Myles Russell-Cook, one of the curators of QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection, in a free discussion highlighting the narrative thread of the HIV experience throughout the exhibition.

This free event is presented by the NGV in collaboration with Living Positive Victoria.

All are welcome to this event, in particular people living with HIV.

Please register here to attend.

Speakers

Nic Holas

Nic Holas is a writer, activist and co-founder of The Institute of Many (TIM), Australia’s largest grassroots movement for people living with HIV. His essays and stories have been published in literary anthologies The Best of The Lifted Brow: Volume Two, Growing Up Queer in Australia and Queerstories. Hs other writing on HIV, human rights, queer politics and popular culture has appeared in The Saturday Paper, The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald, the ABC, Archer Magazine, Hello Mr., and Junkee, as well as the local and international queer media.

Myles Russell-Cook

Myles Russell-Cook is Senior Curator of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Victoria. Myles has undertaken research and held curatorial fellowships throughout Australia and internationally, with a focus on developing exhibitions and programming that give agency to culturally diverse artists within a contemporary art context. He is one of the curators of Queer: Stories from the NGV Collection.

The exhibition

QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection. 

QUEER shines a light on the NGV Collection to examine and reveal the queer stories works of art can tell. This exhibition of works from the NGV Collection spans historical eras and diverse media including painting, drawing, photography, decorative arts, fashion, video, sculpture, and design and explores queerness as an expression of sexuality and gender, a political movement, a sensibility, and as an attitude that defies fixed definition.

QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection is a free exhibition and is on display until 21 August 2022, on Level 3, NGV International.

Image caption: David McDiarmid Don’t Forget to Remember 1994; from the Rainbow Aphorism series 1994, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased 1994. © David McDiarmid/Licensed by Copyright Agency, Australia