Luke
Donnelly

My work stems from Halberstam's ideas of Queer practice as ‘a scavenger methodology’¹ gathered materials form the work. These found images are filtered through the practice, the resulting archive shapes narratives that move across mediums - through gender and sexuality + non-static ideas of the Other.

Through this I am interested in acknowledging marginalisation however true and in effect can be weaponised, coupled with other privileges to employ Otherness as armour against accountability. "If in my work, a language in which to critique occurs, then I must bend that finger right back around.”

Within this ideas of value, a ‘system of hierarchies of agreed upon social worth.’² drive my thinking - how these systems are mediated through a queer lens & how these systems can dismantle/undermine queer solidarity.

From a shitty couch in Haarlem I first felt a schism with my own political grouping - on New Years eve watching a circuit cruise (Big Gay™ sexy sex party for the uninitiated) breaking travel restrictions - colonial optics in full effect - proximity to power, to value was used as a system to mitigate solidarity.

Engaging with this brief, I see punk and queerness alike not as fixed concepts or aesthetics, but complex bedrocks of methodologies of refusal. With legacies challenging dominant norms and dismantling expected gender roles that provide a framework to reflect on their radical potentials as well as their failures and assimilations.

These moments of breakdown become sites to reassess, resist hegemonic structures, and reimagine more expansive, self-determined forms of expression.

^1. Halberstam, J. (1998) Female masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press.

^2.Van Laar, T. and Diepeveen, L. (2013) Artworld prestige : arguing cultural value. Oxford: Oxford University Press.