Midlands Art Papers Launch: Queer Work in Museums and Galleries

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Join us to launch the latest issue of Midlands Art Papers, which focuses on queer work in museums and galleries. This year’s issue brings together just a selection of the exhibitions, displays, and community projects in the Midlands that have addressed LGBTQ+ experiences and histories, and spotlights queer artworks and objects in local museum and gallery collections. It includes material that reflects on objects and practices in Leicester, Walsall, Coventry, Birmingham, and Wolverhampton.

This launch event is designed to complement and augment the articles in this issue, through short talks by artists and practitioners that reflect further on the processes, possibilities, and challenges of doing queer work in museums and galleries, in the Midlands and outside of it, and in the present and over time. Lunch will be provided, with space for more informal discussion and networking.

A full schedule for the event is forthcoming. Speakers include:

• Exodus Crooks (artist)
• Deirdre Figueiredo (Craftspace Director)
• Charan Singh (artist)
• Matt Smith (artist)
• John Yeadon (artist)

Deirdre will use {Queer} + {Metals} project and exhibition as a case study to highlight an LGBTQ+ led, collaborative and enquiring journey between Deirdre Figueiredo, Dauvit Alexander and Rebekah Frank which resulted in a unique exhibition, an Instagram showcase, essays, video interviews and artists’ responses to questions about queerness and metalworking.

There is something in the resilience and transformative capacity of metal that is, at least to me, reminiscent of the queer experience. – Amparo Pons Grau (she/her), Artist

Queerness is a rejection of binaries and residing in a life in the in-between. – Cate Richards (they/them), Artist

This event will take place in LOB 101 at the Library Of Birmingham. Accessibility information for the venue is available here.