Artists in the show:
Alvin Ong
Anika Roach
Brea Weinreb
David Weishaar
Giorgio Celin
James Bartolacci
Justin Yoon
Kyle Coniglio
Logan T. Sibrel
Morteza Khakshoor
Nicko Cecchini
RF. Alvarez
Sola Olulode
Exhibition Info:
address: 4 cromwell place, london SW7 2JE
dates: march 22 - 26
hours: open daily, 10am - 6pm
Taymour Grahne Projects is excited to announce the launch of Queer Intimacy – A Group Show, the gallery’s fourth Satellite group exhibition, featuring an exciting line up of 13 contemporary artists exploring the theme of queer intimacy. Accompanying the exhibition is a text by Russell Tovey.
Text by Russell Tovey
Queer art was always seen as a fringe art movement when I first came upon the art world as a teenager in the 1990’s. It wasn’t seen as mainstream or marketable, more subculture than anything else and a position for the go-to ‘acceptable’ queer artist of the time was historically occupied by both Francis Bacon and David Hockney, there wasn’t an allocated position for anything else, anything else it seemed, had been pushed into the art margins. This always troubled me, I wanted to see myself, my history, my community, but I didn’t want to feel othered, my British education and 1980’s upbringing had done enough of that for me and the art I saw in galleries I wanted to represent me and it clearly didn’t, for me and for so many, for very many different reasons.
But now, we are firmly embedded into a golden period of figurative art representing diversity in all of its beauty and forms, it has now been deemed as commercial. This movement, incrementally building over the past five years, spear headed by a very transformative and forthright New York centric queer art crew, has thrust queer imagery to the forefront, spinning auction houses and art galleries on their heads. How did this happen and why now? Fashions and fads come and go, but now more so than ever, everyone needs to see themselves represented on gallery walls. It’s easy to be wary of something if you never see it and we have a generation of activists and artists unwilling to be kept quiet and thankfully they have and are making art that is authentic, honest and vital. They are teaching the world that we are here as we always have been and we aren’t going anywhere. You can try to silence us, but we come back screaming.
Being queer was always political, we’ve gone into literal battle, won out by queer ancestral heroes and here are again. The world spins backwards and in circles. So this exhibition,‘Queer Intimacy’ at Taymour Grahne Projects isn’t just a collective of brilliant artists all mining what it is to be queer and alive today, they are showing us a very real lived existence. Queer joy, queer love, queer lives authentically lived for all to see. These queer artist’s will no longer be pushed into the margins, they are here, they are queer and they aren’t going anywhere. This isn’t just an art exhibition, this is a loaded gun.
