Break The Binaries
Image: Dylan Mooney’s We Are All Heroes
“Bend, blend, blur or break” your perception of gender and identity at the Science Gallery’s first event of 2023, Break The Binaries. The 12 installations, ranging from interactive videos and animation, digital paintings and even live invertebrates, are “intended to create connections and conversation,” says curator Tilly Boleyn.
Developed in collaboration with Science Gallery London in response to their 2020 show Genders: Shaping and Breaking the Binary, this exhibition features artists and collectives across Australia and the UK.
The works express diverse perspectives on gender and cultural identity through modern mediums, technologies, and techniques to extend our understanding of ourselves and each other.
We Are Here
Breaking more than just conventions of gender, the exhibition transcends mediums, featuring works that use old and new techniques, materials and approaches. Artist in Residence at Yarra Youth Services Zeth Cameron’s Queervoice 101 is a video installation challenging society’s binary perspective on voice, featuring interactive voice-changing microphones that offer the opportunity for the audience to explore their own identities and voices.
We Are Here Because Of Those That Are Not, by London-based artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, records the lives of Black Trans people through an interactive animation experience and has been extended to include local Australian perspectives for this iteration of the work.
Local Lauri Pavlovich’s Bugs Against The Binaries is a series of six exhibits featuring live non-binary invertebrates in playful habitats with an audio commentary by the artist.
We Are All Heroes
Another highlight of the exhibition is proud Yuwi, Torres Strait and South Sea Islander artist Dylan Mooney’s We Are All Heroes, a series of six larger-than-life portraits that represent various intersectional identities outside the boundaries of traditional hero characters in popular culture.
“Pride is us holding these spaces for ourselves, we’re giving ourselves agency to tell our own stories.”
Audiences may have already seen Dylan’s work at the NGV Queer exhibition, on Ben and Jerry’s, This Is Our Whirled packaging, spreading awareness for the fight against climate change in the Torres Strait Islands, or even on the front page of Google in honour of the 120th birthday of activist and trailblazer Aunty Pearl Gibbs “Gambanyi”.
Readers in or visiting Canberra will also be able to catch Dylan’s work at the National Portrait Gallery’s Portrait23 Exhibition.
Science Gallery, Melbourne University, 700 Swanston Street, Parkville February 18 – June 18, 2023.
