HERK ALEXANDER ‘The River In My Eyes’
To coincide with the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in February 2025, DRAW Space will present QUEER DRAWING, which contemplates the profound connection between drawing and queerness—presenting drawings by 20 queer and ally-identifying artists, each drawing a window into the lived experience of queerness in all its diversity. Queerness is revealed in lines, shadows, and mark-making.
Opening 6-8pm Thursday, 6 February, during the first week of Mardi Gras and again on Saturday, 15 February, from 6-8 pm. With artist talks on Saturday the 8th of February 2-4 pm. Join the artists and DRAW Space team to celebrate.
Drawing is an inherently intimate act at the genesis of thought. It requires unique ways of seeing, often revealing what is hidden. Similarly, queerness embodies the idea that the personal is political; it represents a distinctive way of being and seeing, often hidden in history. In this exhibition, queerness serves as an inclusive identity for the LGBTQIA+ community and a fluid term for artistic expression, style, content, and concept.
Drawing is an act of close observation that finds a parallel in queer perception, a finely tuned awareness of subtleties in apparency, dress, and demeanour to recognise queerness in others. Like a sketch being erased and redrawn, so too, queerness exists as a state of constant becoming—forever reimagined, challenged, and lived. By translating a queer gaze through drawing, hidden worlds are revealed.
Curated by queer drawing artist Jeremy Smith, QUEER DRAWING incorporates a variety of approaches, from intricate observational sketches to bold, abstract gestures. Collectively, they explore themes of love, identity, community, and resistance. Through drawing, the participating artists make visible the intersections of their queerness with the broader cultural, social, and political landscapes. Each of the 20 artists invites you into their own unique personal queer world.
QUEER DRAWING features the work of:
Andrew Nicholls
Dan Gladden
Gareth Ernst
Graham Robertson
Herk Alexander
Jack Buckley
Jake Alexander Cruz
Jeff McCann
Jeremy Smith
Jodi Clark
Keroshin Govender
Kim Leutwyler
Kurt Schranzer
Liz Bradshaw
Luke Thurgate
Michael Simms
Samuel Luke
Scott Elk
Tango Conway
Yiorgos Zafiriou
The exhibition runs from 6pm Thursday 6 February to 5pm Sunday 2 March 2025.
Kurt Schranzer (he/him)
‘Picture of Lop-Lop and His Faithful Retainers Crossing the Sea, Encountering a Terrible Storm and the Vengeful Spirits of the Deep-Sea-Fish’, 2015–2019, 59 x 114 cm
Website: kurtschranzer.com
Artwork Description:
My current works deploy conventions and techniques found in collage practice, analogue technical drawing, and digital drawing. There are cross-cultural and art-historical quotations, principally between visual languages, compositions, and themes found in 20th-century Western modernism and 19th-century Japanese ‘warrior pictures’ depicting ocean battles and other legendary scenes. From a psychoanalytic perspective, I have adopted the alter-ego of Lop-Lop, a reference to the bird-like figure Loplop originally used as an alter-ego by the modernist Max Ernst. Lop-Lop, in turn, often takes on the identity of Minamoto no Yoshitsune, a commander of the Minamoto clan described in Japanese literature as a ‘tragic hero’, great but deeply flawed. In this regard, there is a complex inhabitation of psyches, form, and manner of presentation that is adjectively ‘queer’ (intersectional, complex, idiosyncratic).
Impersonation, substitution, appropriation, and commandeering of identities, poses, and settings can be used to critique, subvert, play, and be ‘claimed as one’s own’. There is artifice, multiplicity, fluidity, mimicry, subterfuge and “sabotage through camouflage.” There is ‘queerness’ in camouflage, for disguising and obscuring is often a lived reality for ‘the other’. Here, subjects (boats, warriors, deep-sea fish) and meanings (personal identity, the autobiographical element) are veiled—conceptually via alter-egos and visually in the work’s design and complexity. In the words of David J. Getsy (a thesis in ‘Ten Queer Theses on Abstraction’), “Infiltration, camouflage, and opacity must be embraced. It is a matter of survival, of thriving, and of resistance to have tactics of dissemblance, duplicity, masking, camouflage, and code-switching at one's disposal.”
Artist Bio:
Born in 1965 in Penrith, NSW, Australia, Kurt Schranzer is a Sydney-based artist and lecturer currently residing on the Yorke Peninsula, South Australia. Schranzer has worked at UNSW Art & Design (previously the College of Fine Arts and City Art Institute) for almost four decades, largely teaching within the discipline of drawing. His works have been exhibited at various institutions, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Grafton Regional Gallery, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Orange Regional Gallery, Penrith Regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, The University Gallery (University of Newcastle), and Macquarie University Art Gallery.
Samuel Luke (he/him)
‘Baby Blue’, 2002, 80cm x 93cm, (NFS)
Website: samuellukeart.com
Instagram: @samuellukeart
Artwork Description:
Baby Blue is a hand-painted, hand-quilted indigo-dyed quilt made from repurposed fabrics about growing up as a tomboy and how those boyish experiences helped me affirm my gender in my memories now since transitioning. It features moments from my childhood and some important gender transition milestones.
As a trans person, my childhood & adolescent memories are not always affirming of my identity/body/self today. I tend to pick and choose certain childhood memories to hold onto and which ones to let go of. Growing up as a tomboy and having lots of boyish experiences now help me affirm my gender in my memories since transitioning.
Baby Blue is about renewing those old memories, looking back on them and seeing the boy I was, sewing them back together to form an affirming narrative that reflects who I am today. I made this baby quilt to comfort my younger self. To show him there is a future where he can be his authentic self. I loved incorporating textile terminology in this quilt and relating it to my gender transition. It’s so tender and tactile, and it shows how much I still care for the young person I used to be.
Artist Bio:
Samuel Luke Beatty (he/him) is an artist who uses graphic narratives and autobiographical storytelling to explore the intimate realities of being transgender. His works take the form of digital illustration, prints, comics, embroidery, quilts and murals. His art offers alternate forms of queer and trans representation to other gender explorers on similar journeys, from tomboy childhood gender euphoria to affirming moments of gay trans masculinity. Samuel currently lives and works in Sydney, on Dharug Country, NSW.
Tango Conway (she/her)
'Scrape the colour off the iris and still see', 2024, 76 x 65.5cm ($1,800)
Website: tangoconway.com
Instagram: @tangoconway
Artwork Description:
The title of this drawing is derived from the lyric essay ‘Bluets’ by Maggie Nelson. The text traverses themes of grief and love that are fleshed out through Nelson's meditations on the colour blue.
Nelson’s text permeated my thoughts as I composed this work. I was reflecting on both tender and tentative touch as I nursed an injury to my right shoulder while navigating deep feelings of heartbreak and love. What became clear to me through this work was the astounding capacity that I had to simultaneously expose and heal the wounds of my heart in exceptional circumstances. That is why “Scrape the colour off the iris and still see” jumped off the page for me in its succinct description of ocular mutilation coupled with the clarity to still see despite this.
The imagery in my drawing that depicts a tentative touch is at times concealed and revealed by textures of painted fabric and blue, carbon-copy lines. These gestures within my work articulate the tensions I felt at the time between the physical pain in my shoulder, grief and the gentle care of loved ones that I found myself in.
Artist Bio:
Tango Conway graduated from the National Art School with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Sculpture (2016) – with the academic achievement award after receiving the highest mark in her cohort – and a Graduate Diploma of Fine Arts, Drawing (2019). Conway received the John Olsen Figure Drawing Prize (2016), The Jocelyn Maughan Sketchbook Prize (2016) and the Art Gallery of NSW Robert Le Gay Brereton Memorial Prize (2019).
Her work was chosen as a finalist in the Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award (2022) with the exhibition touring across various regional NSW galleries until 2024. Conway has works held by the National Art School Collection and in private collections in Sydney, Melbourne, New York, London and Barcelona.
Scott Elk (he/him)
‘Reclining Doug on Thrift Shop Blanket’, 2024, 76 x 52cm
Website: scottelk.com
Instagram: @scottelkartwork
Artwork Description:
This charcoal drawing depicts my partner in a state of repose. As an artist, I find myself drawn to the intricate details of pattern, and in this work, I became lost in the representation of the furry nature of the thrift shop blanket, allowing it to push the figure into negative space. The interplay of furry figure and furry ground creates a dynamic visual tension that excites me, while my lines are searching, emphasizing a moment in time and the fluidity of form. This searching quality invites the viewer to engage with the work to explore the figure's nuances and the patterns surrounding it.
In my practice, queerness is about the gender and sexual visibility I want to see in the world as well as documentation of my own personal and intimate queer experience. It's about celebrating identity and the beauty found in diverse expressions of masculinity. I am sharing with the world what I find beautiful and, in turn, disrupting the traditional, hyper-masculine ideal by offering a more nuanced and inclusive vision of male beauty, the balancing act between subject and technique.
Artist Bio:
Scott Elk is an Australian artist, educator, and curator currently living and working in the United States of America, exploring the world through ceramics, drawing, painting, printmaking, and sound. With a background in visual arts, Scott’s disillusionment with the commercialisation of his creative energy pushed him to decide to pursue art full time, wishing to use his powers for good, working on art and projects personally driven and causes he believes in.
Often working in series, Scott’s exploration of a subject crosses disciplines to help tell a story. The long hours spent honing his craft are evident in his technical proficiency, with artworks in a series, pieces in a much bigger puzzle. The stories are often personal recollections and moments of intense emotions that have inspired Scott to pick up a pen or a stick of charcoal to scribble some words or pictures to start his observations. This concept-driven aspect injects Scott’s work with the passion of someone speaking with enthusiasm and curiosity about life. Undeniably interested in the materiality of his mediums, Scott’s work plays in this space like a kid with all the crayons in the pack, using every colour to speak about his love.
Keroshin Govender (he/him)
‘Nēram Nūl’ (Time Threads)’, 2024, 87 x 115cm ($2,800)
Website: keroshin.com
Instagram: @keroshin
Artwork Description:
Numerous times, my husband and I have imagined and made plans for a life with children. While these plans did not materialise, we still imagine an alternate timeline, a nēram nū, with fondness. This drawing comprises hand-dyed natural indigo fabric and various found materials overlayed using hand sewing and machine felting.
The history of textiles, and especially indigo dyeing, has been interwoven with that of my family and many other descendants of the 19th-century Tamil diaspora. Histories of trade, knowledge sharing, exploration, exploitation and violence have left intergenerational legacies, generating complex hybrid identities. These notions of race and ethnicity cannot be seen as separate from sexuality. While comfort is often found in a queer community, “race” can still lead to exclusion, even in (and sometimes especially in) queer settings. Similarly, “queerness” excludes, even in (and sometimes especially in) ethnic communities.
Artist Bio:
I am an artist working and living on unceded Gadigal land, exploring notions of race, ethnicity, and cultural practices. My research has been influenced by Homi K. Bhabha and Stuart Hall’s descriptions of culture and identity as being in a constant state of change and not from a single time and place. As a Tamil migrant to Australia who grew up in apartheid and then post-apartheid South Africa, I’ve witnessed my communities’ identities being subjected to various levels of categorisation and stratification.
My methods involve investigating histories and material processes, exposing various treasured items as hybrids, and overlaying images and words from personal archives. This means that the work touches on topics ranging from global trade and colonisation to material craft history, genealogy, and ancestral rituals.
Jeff McCann (He/They)
‘Thanks For Being My Chosen Family’, 2025, 50x70cm
Website: jeffmccann.com
Instagram: @jeffmccan
Artwork Description:
This artwork is all about thanking the people who are my chosen family. While also celebrating the special and often important part chosen families play within the LGBTQIA+ community. I wanted it to be hand-drawn and conversational in tone to bring life and humanity to the work. And the colour and spark is to add an element of play.
Artist Bio:
Jeff McCann (he/they) is an artist, illustrator & maker living on Gadigal Land in Sydney. He strives to create inclusive work that celebrates the making process. He encourages his audience to step into his world and get involved, exploring themes of play, nostalgia, world-building, games and the natural environment. His work can range from murals, public art, community engagement projects and artwork licensing to wearable art, illustration, collaborations and small-batch products. Jeff has created work for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Twenty10, Wear It Purple and Heaps Gay.
Gareth Ernst (he/him)
‘Blonde Venus', 2025, (Performance. Charcoal, ash and oil stick on canvas), 110cm x 150cm ($500)
Website: garethernst.com
Instagram: @gareth_ernst_artist
Artwork Description:
Inspired by Marlene Dietrich’s strip from a gorilla suit in a cage in the movie ‘Blonde Venus’ this in-situ life drawing of an anonymous model in an animal suit will touch on themes of race, gender, and queer desire. And on the nature of the hidden and the exposed is at the heart of drawing from life.
Live drawing performances at Draw Space on Thursday, February 6, at 6 pm and Saturday, February 6 pm.
Artist Bio:
Gareth Ernst graduated from the National Art School with a Master of Fine Arts in drawing (2017) –With previous degrees in Fine Arts, Art History, Theatre Design, Philosophy, and Cinema. Gareth has exhibited and performed in Sydney and Berlin and has works held by the National Art School Collection and in private collections in Sydney, Melbourne, Berlin, New York, and London. Gareth Ernst’s drawings are illicit love letters. They deal with the secret and the underground, touching on the pornographic and the criminal, revealing secret Worlds parallel to our own.