Trifle.

Private View: Friday 26th June, 6-9pm
You enter Trifle through the playground of a Victorian school into a noughties gym hall, replete with climbing bars, basketball hoops and floor tape. The space, for some, may evoke one of the most painful and torturous environments of adolescence. Whether you were pretending to be straight or doodling in the back of textbooks, school is a pivotal and confusing moment in all of our lives. It marks the beginning of realising you might be different from your peers, a moment of searching for acceptance and sometimes another stage of a queer person’s exclusion and isolation.

Trifle brings together the work of four queer artists who share their exposed imagination, unleashing bizarre figures, animals and settings which can at times be unsettling or arousing. Each artist confidently indulgences in the absurd. The athleticism of completing a highly focused piece of work is sometimes disguised by its colourful or whimsical sensibilities but makes them no less examples of creative and physical achievements.

Objectivity, tradition and norms are refused while play is foregrounded in the artists’ work. Their pieces are characterised by escapist fantasies, symbolic iterations of desire and by a degree of sincere love for their mediums and their subjects. This turns the regulated purpose of the school gym on its head and allows for expectations to be inverted, freedom, merriment and laughter to ensue.

Curated by Thomas Rhys Dixon
With special thanks to Miller Schulman