Launching the NGV x AQuA: Pride Month series, Open Forum will provide an opportunity for community leaders to gather and facilitate a broad and open discussion about the importance of archiving marginal histories.

Looking at topics ranging from what constitutes a community archive, to the importance of collecting institutions representing marginal histories, the forum will be moderated by NGV Curator Meg Slater and AQuA Vice President Angela Bailey. The forum will be a democratic, open discussion between artists, arts workers and archivists whose practice encompasses or intersects with archival work in First Nations, feminist and queer contexts.

Moderators

Meg Slater (she/they) is Curator, International Exhibition Projects at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). Since 2017, Meg has worked on a number of the NGV’s major international exhibitions, including MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art, French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the forthcoming Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi. Meg was also one of the five curators who organised QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection (2022), the most historically expansive thematic presentation of its kind ever presented by an Australian art institution. In 2021, Meg completed a Master of Art Curatorship at The University of Melbourne with First Class Honours. Meg’s thesis explored the potential for large arts institutions to more meaningfully engage with marginal subjects and histories through exhibition making and programming.

Angela Bailey is a curator, photographer and creative producer whose practice actively explores and interprets our rich and diverse queer histories and culture by creating exhibitions, installations, discourse and public programs of engagement. Her experiences as a young activist participating in the fight for gay law reform in Queensland continue to inform her work with LGBTIQ+ communities. Angela has a Postgraduate Degree in Fine Art, a Masters of Art Curatorship and is currently a Fellow at Arts Centre Melbourne and Vice President of the Australian Queer Archives (AQuA).

Speakers

Elvis Richardson is an artist who collects and curates personalised objects and imagery she extracts from public sources and re-constructs them as the raw materials of her studio practice. Her works employ formalist approaches and mediums to comment on taste, class, the sublime and her own agency as an artist when also trapped in an aspirational exposure-based system of certain economic precarity. Richardson founded the CoUNTess blog from 2008-2016 and since 2017 operates as the collaborative Countess.Report with Miranda Samuels, Amy Prcevich and Shevaun Wright. Countess.Report publishes data on gender representation in the Australian contemporary art world. Working simultaneously in the legacies of institutional critique and research based conceptual art practices, the work of Countess.Report is both art and advocacy.

Beau Newham (he/him) works at the intersections of LGBTIQ+ activism and HIV advocacy and support with a focus on memory activism, community building and storytelling. He has worked in Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia, and is the co-founder of the Queer Indonesia Archive. He currently works at Living Positive Victoria and National Association of People with HIV in Australia.

Torika Bolatagici is a Fijian-Australian artist, writer and academic working across multiple disciplines including photography, video, projection, publication, installation and curation. In 2013 she founded Community Reading Room (CRR). CCR grew out of a community need for a collection and space for First Nations, Black, global Indigenous artists of colour to connect with each other and an archive of books and ephemera that privileged the creative practices of their kin, ancestors and peers. The CRR was established as a response to shared lived-experiences of practitioners and students who were exhausted by a monocultural art curriculum that ignored their presence, excluded their historical contributions and contemporary reference points. Over the past nine years, the CRR has evolved from a static collection, to one that incorporates a co-curated program of exhibitions and events to engage the public with the themes arising from the collection.

NGV x AQuA: Pride Month

This program is part of NGV x AQuA: Pride Month, a series of talks, discussions and workshops in Community Hall every Sunday in June presented by NGV in collaboration with the Australian Queer Archives (AQuA). Shining a light on subjects ranging from the role of community archives within society to the potential for art to function as an archive, these programs will invite community members and Melbourne Now artists to reflect on the importance of documenting, sharing and interpreting marginalised histories and experiences. More information on the series can be found here.