Exhibition Opportunity

MATERIALKINK - A Call for Works Exploring Materiality and Alternative Sexualities

Updated: 23 February 2017

The Leather Archives & Museum, GAG Gallery is currently accepting entries for its first group exhibition scheduled to open in July 2017 and run through December 2017. There is no set theme guiding the content or subject matter of exhibited works; however, as the titleMATERIALKINK suggests, we are interested in artists that creatively engage materials within the context of alternative sexuality. The final shape and themes of MATERIALKINK will emerge from the selected works.

Leather. Rubber. Latex. Denim. Steel. Wax. Rope. Shoe Polish. Body Hair. Electrodes. These are a sampling of the materials that structure and accompany the varied identities and practices that broadly comprise Leather sex, BDSM, kink, and fetishism. Almost always in direct relation to the body, these and many other materials are hyper-charged surfaces, objects, and substances invested with erotic significance and value, accumulations of personal history, fantasies, attachments, affects, and desires. These materialities are often modified, manipulated, and re/combined in response to shifting needs, ways of playing, or to expand and intensify their sensorial potentialities. The materiality of kinky sex matters a great deal.

The Leather Archives & Museum, GAG Gallery is particularly interested in reviewing the submission of artworks produced within the last three years that: demonstrate creative uses of materials in relation to alternative sexality; are inspired by the varied materialities of Leather/BDSM/Kink/Fetishism themselves; explore kink-identified approaches to art-making materials; creatively incorporate, process, or transform kinky materials in ways that ask questions or generate provocative dialogues between art making and the crafting of radical and deviant sexualities.