Queer

BACKGROUND Queer 2016 was presented as part of the 30 artworks installed for Out of the Matrix exhibition at RMIT University Gallery. Using the premise of the matrix, that from what all prints emanate, this exhibition activated an expanded understanding of print imaging. CONTRIBUTION Queer 2016 specifically utilises a combination of the readymade, repetition and the multiple to evoke an extended understanding of otherness through a print informed practice. The use of acrylic mirrored strips to create a barcode challenges the conventions of what a print can be through materiality and activates references to Foucault's heterotopic space. By installing the work in a corridor the gallery visitor activates this transitory space and highlights a between space. Queer 2016 captures, inverts and replicates the viewer making them the matrix of their own image. This work attempts to place the viewer outside themselves to highlight sameness and difference and the queering of the self. This is a new work, not previously exhibited. SIGNIFICANCE RMIT Gallery is one of the leading University Galleries in Australia that is recognised globally as a gallery of substance and is listed as an ERA All artists selected are key Melbourne practitioners and educators in Printmaking (Monash University, RMIT and VCA) and have international status as evidenced through ongoing presentations at conferences such as the IMPACT International Printmaking Conference. Queer 2016 was discussed in the published catalogue, video output, interviews and floor talks over the duration of the exhibition, placing identities of otherness in mainstream art production.