Gaze of Our Lives at Lismore Regional Gallery will analyse the ingrained stereotypes of perceived LGBTQIA+ lives still perpetuated from and by mainstream news media.
After the recent Marriage Equality debates, the discussions regarding LGBTQIA+ children and teaching staff being expelled from religious schools because of their sexuality and the Israel Folau debacle, discrimination against the community never seems far from public discussion and media attention. This work explores the constant and continuous scrutiny focused on the LGBTQIA+ world.
News and media are littered with examples of homophobia, mistaken gay sexuality, gay stereotypes and perceived gay weakness.
Cinema exacerbates these stereotypes with LGBTQIA+ people often depicted as murderers, paedophiles, and violent psychopaths, suffering from mental illness, desperate and destined to come to a bad ending.
When the Prime Minister of Australia talks of “family values”, the artist understands these words as coded to mean straight and acceptable, and that LGBTQIA+ families are inferior and false.
Through this ongoing series of works, stereotypes will be questioned, scrutinised, dissected and reclaimed as sites of strength and pride.
