London’s art world has another busy Autumn season ahead. Deptford’s VSSL Studio continues its FACET art programme dedicated to the exploration and celebration of contemporary queer art and culture, and presents a group exhibition featuring five artists: Benjamin Sebastian, Alicia Radage, June Lam, Rocío Boliver and Marcin Gawin.
Running from October 5-29, with a launch event open to all on Friday October 6, this show combines collage, sculpture, video, photography, and installation.
JUNE LAM is a multidisciplinary artist, activist and community organiser, working across nightlife and within the trans community. For October’s group exhibition, FACET takes a fresh look at June’s evocative collages which explore isolation, anxiety, and fear, his ancestry, spiritual practice, and journey as a Vietnamese Chinese person within the context of diaspora and displacement. Graduating from Slade School of Fine Art with an MA in sculpture, Lam’s work centres queer desirability politics, fag effeminacy, and embodied experiences of intergenerational trauma. In his collage work, he takes imagery from, amongst other sources, vintage magazines rooted in a dehumanising and anthropological Western gaze upon Southeast Asian people and people of colour. Now liberated from objectification, Lam honours the spirits and individuals depicted, restoring their agency and acknowledging their complexity. He sees this as a spiritual reclamation, offering those depicted space for love, attention and care.
ALICIA RADAGE creates work in performance, video, sculpture and sound, Radage’s current research looks at the intersection between the neurodiverse experience and animist practice, looking at ways of communicating and being outside of the neurotypical.
BENJAMIN SEBASTIAN is a trans-disciplinary artist-curator based in London. Their practice might be imagined as a constellation of mirrors, reflecting aspects of the body, time and spaces they inhabit, or as world-making experiments, manifested through processes of bricolage, assemblage and ritual.
ROCIO BOLIVER collaborates with photographer Karolina Bazydlo and model Bartlomiej Gudejko in a bold response to the invisibility of the aging female form within the realm of sexual pleasure, desire, and erotic play. The artist has reimagined the conventional ‘pin up’ calendar concept creating portrayals of womanly autonomy. Boliver confronts the absurdity of society’s narrow beauty standards and the consequent marginalisation of older women. The works offer an empowering and unapologetic message, encouraging viewers to recognize and celebrate female sexuality, ownership, pleasure and the power that this holds. Known as La Congelada de Uva, Boliver is a key figure in underground performance art in Mexico and beyond. For over thirty years, her work has confronted the ideological grid that shapes women’s lives, challenging ageism and capitalism’s impact on women in the stage of life between menopause and old age.
MARCIN GAWIN is an interdisciplinary artist based in Bristol, whose work encompasses image construction, installation, and live art. His fascination with the human body and its potential for transformation is evident in his practice, which explores the body’s function in mundane practicality, as well as in speculative and occult realities.
FACET Group Exhibition OCTOBER 2023 Launch Event: 6-9pm, Friday the 6th of October 2023 RSVP Here Exhibition Opening Hours:12-5pm, Thursday to Sunday - 5th to 29th of October 2023
Queerguru’s Contributing Editor Ris Fatah is a successful fashion/luxury business consultant (when he can be bothered) who divides and wastes his time between London and Ibiza. He is a lover of all things queer, feminist, and human rights in general. @ris.fatah
Labels: 2023, Alicia Radage., Benjamin Sebastian, FACET Art Show, June Lam, Marcin Gawin., Rocio Boliver, VSSL Gallery London
