This Month, Oxford Street Is Getting a Gorgeous Grotto Filled With Queer History

There’s a giant rainbow clam shell coming to Darlinghurst this month. Around it: shimmering tinsel, soft sculpture, strange little creatures, and the recorded voices of people who knew, loved, and witnessed Oxford Street during some of its most phenomenal historic nights.

This is The Golden Mile Grotto, the work of five queer artists who call themselves The Sirens Collective. 

For Oxford Street’s Art & About Festival, they’re turning the Darlinghurst Community Space into an underwater sanctuary where you can dress up, make something, listen, or contribute your own stories. 

The collective — Selina Springett, Shoufay Derz, Jayanto Tan, Shelley Tansley and Ariella van Luyn — works across visual art, sound, performance and storytelling. Its name comes from the mythical sirens whose songs lured sailors to their deaths – though the artists adamantly say that lore contains some not-so-great ideas about women and desire.

“We’re not interested in luring anyone to their deaths!” they tell Star Observer. Phew – turns out, they’d much rather draw people into a place where identity can be fluid, playful and wonderfully difficult to pin down.

Oxford Street gave them plenty to work with for this project. Its queer history holds protest and loss alongside parties, friendships and nights that ran well past sunrise. 

The Sirens have spent months researching; a soundscape by Springett incorporates excerpts from the Pride History Group’s oral histories, letting visitors hear the candid, intimate stories in people’s own voices.

“You hear humour, personality, intimacy, difficulty and joy,” the collective says. “We feel very honoured to be able to let those voices resonate through the Grotto.”

The work is still growing. Its coral includes 3D prints made with recycled ocean plastic filament from UNSW Smart Lab, while Ngaire Pakai, a Wiradjuri and Māori artist, has been commissioned to weave a net. 

Visitors can add their own images and stories to the Grotto, too. Oxford Street’s past is housed there, but nobody is asking the neighbourhood to sit still in a display case; it becomes a living breathing being.

The Grotto is one stop on a packed Art & About Festival weekend. From 23 to 25 October, the City of Sydney is bringing more than 40 hours of free art and entertainment to Oxford Street and its neighbours: queer public art, drag, dance, cabaret, comedy, workshops, markets and a 24-hour light installation in Taylor Square. 

Bourke Street will close to traffic on Friday evening so the DJs and performers can take over. Come for the art, stay for the street food, and see what happens when Oxford Street gets room to be its best, creatively queer self.

Lord Mayor Clover Moore says the festival builds on what the area has long been: “In many ways, we’re not bringing creativity to Oxford Street, we’re celebrating the creativity that has always been here.”

For Lorraine Lock, Precinct Manager of the Oxford Street Rainbow Precinct, giving local and emerging queer artists public space matters just as much as filling it with colour. “Having queer artists creating work in public space says, quite simply, we are here, we are part of this neighbourhood, and we’re not afraid to be seen,” she explains.

At the Grotto, you can meet the Sirens, try a costume, make an air-dry clay creature, or send “sea snail mail” to your future self.

Perhaps you’ll arrive at the Grotto thinking about Oxford Street’s history, but you will most likely leave thinking about your place in its future. Or, you’ll fall in love with a mermaid/merman. The Sirens would probably be pretty happy with either.

The Golden Mile Grotto is at Darlinghurst Community Space, as a part of the Art & About Festival from 23–25 October.