Presented as part of PICA After Dark, Refracted Reality exhibiting artist Bruno Booth and PICA Studio Residents Janet Carter and Brent Harrison will be speaking with artist and curator Jo Darbyshire about their practices. Join us for an evening of conversation about practices and processes exploring lived experiences and histories on identity, disability, queerness and gender. Grab a drink at PICABAR before and join us in the galleries for an evening of conversation and chance to see work in development in the studios.

PICA After Dark runs on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays throughout November. As the Perth Cultural Centre comes alive with the opening of the WA Museum Boola Bardip, PICA presents an exciting program of artist and curator talks, open studios, gallery tours and an interactive mirrored photobooth. Come along and unwind with some late-night culture, a drink from PICABar and our immersive and emotive exhibitions Forest of Voices and Refracted Reality.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Bruno Booth | Exhibiting artist in Refracted Reality
Bruno Booth is a multidisciplinary artist based in Fremantle. Bruno has used a wheelchair for most of his life, interrupted by a short and unsuccessful career as an amateur stilt walker when he used prosthetic legs as a child. Having a disability has been a constant background hum throughout Bruno’s life. Kind of like a social tinnitus – you know it’s there but you try not to talk about it. It was only when he started to call himself an artist, without cringing too much, that he began to engage critically with what it meant to be categorised as disabled. 

Bruno’s recent work uses participation and large sculptural forms to create experiential works that challenge the able bodied to navigate a world that is uncomfortable by design. His constructed experiences poke fun at the assumptions many people have surrounding disability and yet they also leave lasting impressions that engender a deeper response from the audience.

Brent Harrison | Studio Artist
Brent Harrison is a multidisciplinary artist based in Perth who holds a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from Curtin University. His practice is informed by the methodology of ‘queering’ – the interpretive method used to deconstruct hegemonic masculinities by viewing them through a critical lens that dismantles the dynamics of power. His work attempts to disrupt assimilationist narratives of heteronormativity by using appropriation, reproduction, humour and intervention as methods of cultural resistance.

During his residency at PICA, Brent Harrison will investigate the heteronormative language surrounding gay male homosexuality and how this translates to ideas of effeminacy and shame. Using the mediums of photography, sculpture and installation, Harrison will employ floral motifs and bouquets of flowers as camp affirmations to explore a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between gender and sexuality.

Janet Carter | Studio Artist
Janet Carter currently lives and works in Perth.  Her practice embraces sculpture, installation, performance and new media works. She is primarily concerned with investigating contemporary conceptions around gender, sexuality, desire and embodied identity.  After completing a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Edith Cowan University in 2008, Carter finished Honours in Contemporary Arts in 2010 and is currently a Fine Arts PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia.

During her residency, Carter is using a speculative fiction framework, she will undertake some alternate world building, by asking “What if we lived in a world where our kinship ties were untethered from gender and biology? What if we could choose our family and our roles within them? What would our social and cultural ties look like? What would be our responsibilities and obligations of care for one another?” Beginning with the creation of her own ‘queer elder’ avatar, she will speculate on how we can build ties with each other in this imagined world that will make us stronger and more resourceful in the precarious IRL world we currently live in.

Jo Darbyshire | Facilitator
Jo Darbyshire is a West Australian painter and social history curator. She has an interest in LGBTIQ history and art.