Come Out & Play

About

Curated by artist Andrew Salgado the LGBTQ+ themed exhibition Come Out & Play, celebrates internationally-based queer artists whose practice prioritizes a bold approach and work that is celebratory, challenging, and progressive. The artists included present queerness as manifest through colour and play, a subject matter free from taboo or shame, and a greater practice that responds to the contemporary ideology of what it means to be a queer artist in society. Included works are primarily in – but not limited to – the form of figurative painting. The exhibition presents lesser-known LGBTQ+ artists alongside mid-career or more established artists at work today.

Exhibition Text by Russell Tovey, Collector & Author, Talk Art

You may or may not notice as your visit this gallery exhibition just how much hands and feet matter to these artists, they act as a real guide to us here. Powerful messages are grasped within each hand, whether they are large and cumbersome, out of proportion, powerful, or with a pointed toe, daintily extended, flexed, slender, fleshy, elegant, there is a strength in touch that every artist is exploring. Themes of Lifting, grappling, balancing counter-weight, the planting of a body on solid ground, appendages reaching out and around, stroking, holding, kissing, these figures are full of love, desiring for a connection, whether that be with us the viewer or within their own narratives, we notice this all via their extremities. Come out and play is an internationally diverse exploration of humanity. It’s themes, told through intimate figuration are highly personal, stories weaved by queer voices which can connect us all in a myriad of ways. These themes are universal. Love.  At times we may feel like a voyeur standing in front of them, yet we have been invited in here, granted with the permission to stare, even though our characters rarely confront us with a direct eye-line. Our new friends are bashful, coy, shy, unable to look at us directly but agreeable to the passing glance over their contoured bodies. The timelessness of a look or of a memory, projects a strong nostalgic feeling throughout, it spins and weaves itself into every scene.     With a beautiful sensitivity, and soft nurturing caress, this show is an exploration of the body, whether that be their own or of others, longing for touch is omnipresent. “Come out and Play,” brings artists from all over the world, The Bahamas, Canada, China, Colombia, Germany, Poland, Spain, UK, and the USA. This show’s roster of artists, from totally unique walks of lives and backgrounds, essentially make work to fill a space for when words aren’t enough. All working within a unique intensity and feeling, yet all riffing on the same themes that we witness here, and those themes are love.