Bloody Glorious: The New Maxi Shield Exhibition Is Filled With Community & Love

Before Maxi Shield passed away at the beginning of 2026, she’d had plans for a podcast at Qtopia Sydney. Heartbreakingly, she never got to make it.

Now, the people who loved her are making that happen, but in different way. The new exhibition, Bloody Glorious, honours one of Sydney’s most beloved queens – it features Maxi’s real dressing table, and showcases her enormous heart (and tits), and the community that Maxi loved; that loved her.

Opening to the public on Tuesday, November 3, Bloody Glorious is curated by Qtopia’s Assistant Curator Jeremy Smith, who worked closely alongside Maxi’s drag family – Jacqui, Sheila Bliege, Tora Hymen and Vanity – in putting the exhibition together, to give the deeper insights into Maxi’s world.

And behind all that glamour is a promise they were determined to keep.

“Bloody Glorious is first and foremost a memorial to Maxi,” Smith tells Star Observer. “Not long before she died, she’d been planning a podcast with her close friend Jacqui St Hyde, to be made here at Qtopia. She never got to record it, so this exhibition is our way of keeping that promise.”

Five of Maxi’s most famous outfits will fill the gallery windows, while her original dressing table, sits at the centre – where she really sat for all those nights, putting on the beauty and gloriousness that is Maxi – surrounded by photographs and keepsakes.

“The exhibition is part shrine, part dressing room. Everything comes from Maxi’s own dressing room, which Jacqui has lovingly stored since she passed,” Smith says.

“Her original dressing table sits at the centre as a working station showing the craft of drag, surrounded by her photographs and keepsakes. Visitors are invited to leave their own memories and messages for her.”

Built by the people who loved her

Maxi’s death in February left an enormous hole in Sydney’s queer community. Long before RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under introduced her to international audiences in 2021, she had spent decades performing, fundraising and helping make our nightlife somewhere people felt welcome. She was also a contributor to Sydney’s Star Observer, sharing her voice with the community she loved.

Now, that community has helped make this tribute possible, quite literally paying the way for Maxi’s dressing room to find a home at Qtopia.

The exhibition came together quickly and was a late addition in Qtopia’s program, meaning it could only go ahead if additional funds were raised.

Community members donated $6,000 through Give Out Day, with additional matched funding, to get Bloody Glorious over the line. Those donations are why the doors will open, so if you donated – you made this happen.

“It’s been a community show from the start. It exists only because of our GiveOut Day fundraiser,” Smith says. “That’s in addition to the roughly $120,000 the community raised for Maxi’s cancer treatment and funeral. We’ve developed it with her drag family: Jacqui, Sheila Bliege, Tora Hymen and Vanity.”

For Qtopia CEO Cecily Hardy, the connection to Maxi’s community is central to the exhibition.

“It has happened because of the love and dedication of her closest friends and family, in her drag family especially, but it’s also happened because of the fact that our broader community loves her,” Hardy says.

The scale of that love was already clear when friends began gathering photographs for her funeral.

“When Maxi died, Vanity and Jacqui set up a Dropbox for her funeral, and the community filled it with more than 500 photos,” Smith says. “What struck me was how many different kinds of people loved her, from drag sisters to straight pub regulars.”

Jacqui, who has helped bring the exhibition together, says that connection is what Bloody Glorious celebrates.

“Our exhibition, Bloody Glorious, is a warm celebration of Maxi, honouring her remarkable career, her presence in the community, and the many ways she made people feel seen, lifted up, and proud. It’s about the legacy she leaves behind and the love that is still felt through the community for such an incredible person.”

 

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Maxi truly was the people’s drag queen, the community’s queen – so there will be plenty to admire, and probably many tears. But at this exhibition, there’ll be room to smile, too, and to leave Maxi a message of your own.

Bloody Glorious to the public at Qtopia Sydney on Tuesday, November 3, running until early 2027.