Exhibition as safe space with Visual Arts Curators G. Rolls Bentley & E-J Scott: ART INSIDER

Get an art education with our 2 guests, curators Gemma Rolls-Bentley and E-J Scott!

Art Insider is an art discussion segment with fascinating visual arts thinkers and curators who lift the veil on their corner of the field (hosted by Joana P. R. Neves).

Our art talk explores

• ​The old question "what is contemporary art" but in light of queer communities and trans people.
• ​Curating strategies and innovative approaches.
• ​We discuss their co-curated exhibition "Talisman" about objects with symbolic and energetic force bringing safety and protection, but also of resistance in queer lives–the relation between the talisman and the art object and visual arts is timeless.

(Talisman was an art exhibition presented by Cardion Arts in Collaboration with The Museum of Transology.)

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Key Themes Explored in This Episode: The importance of inclusivity in visual arts. Trans rights. Trans guidance. LGBTQIA+ art and artists. Queering the museum. Curating as an LBBTQIA+ person. Recentering female queer and trans narratives.Major Themes: Curating, Queer art, Museum Communication Strategies and Failures, Queer narratives, LGBTQIA+ art visibility, Lesbian histories, Trans histories, Audience Engagement, How to Engage with inclusivity. Art and activist. Non profit art organisations. Curating. Museums and heritage. New forms of curating. Exhibitions as safe spaces explores the importance of contemporary art spaces, museums and galeries for the LGBTQIA+ community.

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About us: Exhibitionistas is an independent visual arts podcast created and hosted by art writer and curator Joana P. R. Neves

www.exhibitionistaspodcast.com

#visualarts #contemporaryart #lgbtqia #exhibitionistas #exhibitionistaspodcast #joanaprneves #gemmarollsbentley #ejscott #museumoftransology #arteducation #healing #safespaces

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:04

I love these episodes where I don't do much. My guests today are so incredibly professional and articulate, poetic and determined that I just had to ask a simple question and a string of insightful stories ensued, along with illuminating trans, lesbian, queer, and feminist curating framings. Stick around to the end because I assure you, you will come out of this episode more affirmed or more informed at the very least. So welcome to the very first special summer episode of Exhibitionistus. There will be lots of endearing, hilarious, and courageous stories for you, unveiling queer lives in detail and with a tenderness often missing when talking about homosexuality and particularly currently trans people. Interviewing E.J. Scott about his exhibitions through the lens of his trans life and values within the heritage and museum institution was powerful. On the other hand, the incredible work ethic of Gemma Rolls Bentley will give you a real insight into curating from a lesbian, queer perspective. We're all enriched by these stories, and thus she has incredible anecdotes about queer lives from the past and also from today. Learning about the exhibition that brought us here will perfectly illustrate such framings and how they can be useful and exciting and empowering. The exhibition is called Talisman and is centered around the notion of safety and resistance through magical, powerful objects that keep us safe, strong, and resilient. There are lots of references in this episode, which I will include in the newsletter. So sign up, follow us on Instagram, and don't forget to leave us a rating, to donate, or to become a member through Substack or our website, exhibitionisterspodcast.com. And now on with the episode. Enjoy. I am Joanna Piernevish, contemporary art curator and writer, and this is Exhibitionisters, the podcast where we explore art from all angles, stubbornly embracing creativity in its iridescent complexity. This is an art insider episode where I interview fascinating figures of the field, and today is no exception. I have the honour of having here with me two guests, Gemma Rawls-Bentley and E.J. Scott. They co-curated the exhibition Talisman, assisted by assistant curator Katie Delavalle, and which was extended until the 10th of August. So you have time to go, plenty of time. It's in London on Park Street, right next to the Blavatnik building entrance of Tate Modern. You'll find all the information in the show's notes. So please go there. And you can also, while you're there, sign up for the newsletter. So, Gemma and EJ, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to Exhibitionists. Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

It's a pleasure.

SPEAKER_03 3:24

So I'll briefly introduce you very quickly, the embarrassing moment, and then we'll move on to what counts, which is the pleasure of listening to your answers. So Gemma Rolls Bentley is a curator, writer, and creative consultant with a career spanning two decades. She has a multifaceted approach to the field and she champions and supports diversity, particularly female and queer artists, with a mission to create more space for LGBTIQA plus voices and creative endeavors. She is the author of the magnificent book that you must purchase if you don't have Queer Art from Canvas to Club and the Spaces Between, whose title reflects the width of her perspectives on art practices and their spaces. She is in the Leslie Lohman Museum Acquisitions Board, and she sits on the Quarto Association Committee. She's curated too many exhibitions and done too many projects to list here, but I would highlight the Brighton Beacon Collection, which is the largest permanent display of queer art in the UK, and it includes artists such as David Hockney, Isaac Julian, who wrote the forwards for her book, by the way, Catherine Opie, Elm Green and Draxet, Prem Saheb, Sanil Gupta, Sinwai Kin, and Maggie Hambling, who's recently unveiled a new blue plaque, which I discovered in Gemma's Instagram account. So, Gemma, do you want to tell us what happened? What was that blue plaque?

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Sure. It was a really iconic moment. I felt very lucky to be there. Maggie was invited to unveil a blue plaque for the Gateways Club, which was the first lesbian club in the UK. It essentially was a space for lesbians from around 1945 to 1985. And there are many, many, many wild stories from that place. It's a basement bar in Chelsea, just a very unassuming door on the street. I've heard many stories, especially since I posted that reel involving Maggie herself, which she was horrified to hear when I saw her on Wednesday and told her that. And yes, so they invited English Heritage, who are responsible for putting the blue plaques up, have a really brilliant working group led by Amy LeMay, and they've committed to marking more LGBTQIA plus sites around the UK. And the Gateways Club got a blue plaque above the door finally, and apparently it's the first blue plaque that says lesbians plural on it. Yeah, I mean it started, it actually started the guy who took over the lease for the bar, according to the stories, which I believe are true. His grandson, I think it was his grandson or his great nephew, was presenting on the day too. Um apparently he he won the deeds for this bar in a boxing bet that he did very well out of. And I think so that he actually took over in like the um 30s, late 30s, and then his wife, um, who Maggie calls Queen Gina ran the bar with her friend Smithy, who was a lesbian from the American Air Force. There's a really great documentary that's a it's free on iPlayer at the moment called Gateways Grind about the club. It's like an hour long, and it's really good. And Maggie's in that too. Um, but yeah, the these two women ran the bar, a butch and a femme. Well, lesbian presenting women, according to this documentary, everybody assumed they were a couple, but their Gina's daughter says that she asked her mum on her deathbed, Were you and Smithy ever a you know? And she said, No, no, we weren't, but it wasn't because of me, it was because of Smithy. So I presume it's because there was a husband and Smithy wanted to be honourable. But they ran this bar for decades. I mean the stories. It's a great story, it's a really good job. Someone made a made a film. Oh my god, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:30

So Gateways Grind. Gateways Grind on iPlayer. Okay, a must-watch. Okay, amazing. Just need to highlight another project of yours, Gemma, by the way, who which is open uh now and will be open until December, um, at Walterton. It's a two-person exhibition with Maggie, uh Maggie Hambling and Roe Robertson. So E.J. Scott is a curator, cultural producer and academic, senior lecturer in culture, criticism and curation at Central St. Martin's. EJ's curating and projects recenter histories of alienated, othered, and marginalized communities. So I would highlight the West Yorkshire Queer Stories project, uh, which was um organized in partnership with MASMAC Leeds City Museum and West Yorkshire Archives, National Science and Media Museum. But more importantly, uh, EJ is the founder of an absolutely incredible and innovative project called the Museum of Transology, which is the UK's most significant collection of objects representing trans, non-binary, and intersex people's lives. And this year, the Museum of Transology celebrates its 10th anniversary. And we'll we'll talk about all this in a bit. Um, just to finish EJ's uh very short biography and uh again, really, really succinct. There's much, there would be much more to say. Uh, EJ was awarded the UK's Activist Museum Award uh of 2020-21 by the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, and he co-authored the Trans Inclusive Culture Guidance for Museums, Galleries, Archives, and Heritage Organizations with and that includes 11 museums across the UK, namely the National Trusts, which is incredible, amazing. So, do you want to tell us a little bit about that project? Because it seems that it is in very fresh in in the works, as it were.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

The the chance thanks for having me. The trans inclusive culture guidance really responded to a very uh specific point in time. It was produced by the Research Center for Museums and Galleries out of the University of Leicester. Um, and increasingly the research center was, you know, RCMG was getting inquiries from people they'd worked with before and uh members working actively within the sector about how to navigate their institutional values surrounding trans inclusion at a time that was becoming increasingly fraught in the UK with the government and the uh our National Health Service, our university sector, um, the Office for Students, the EHRC pushing for trans exclusion, if you like. The museum and heritage sector in the UK plays a very, very important role in disseminating our social values. You know, it's very much where you find out where you where you belong in society and who you are and how you got here and why. So we've got a really strong sector when it comes to inclusivity. And so, out of those inquiries and and in combination with the difficulties I was facing working on a project I was um I've curated Queer and Now at Tate for a number of iterations, and up to 10,000 people come on one day, and there's a hundred artists and speakers, etc. Well, just a couple of weeks before it we sort of went into full production. There was a protest against uh drag story time, people saying that it wasn't suitable for children and queer families to have access to storytelling within the gallery, and there was a protest outside Tate Britain. You know, it's got the neoclassical stairs, it's a really iconic sort of looking building in our cultural sector, and right up the middle of the stairs with the police, and on one side with the left in support of the activities, and on the other side with the far right, what we were seeing right in front of our eyes in this physical manifestation was also what we were seeing in the cultural sector.

SPEAKER_03 11:48

So and this was in 2023, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Yeah, so our our first iteration of the we worked at a rate of not a project like this would normally take us a couple of years to turn around. We turned around the guidance within six months, we surveyed members in the sector, we got thousands of people writing back about what they needed to know. How can we be transinclusive? What does the law do? Can we be protected, etc. And we navigated um building a document that was both ethics and values as well as legal advice. And we ended up having a huge amount of support from the sector, the International Council of Museums backed it. Uh, there's just been an iteration of it released uh just a couple of weeks ago in Venice of the Italian version, and we're moving into the next stage with 11 partners right here across the UK about how to implement the guidance with case studies, and all of the museums that have signed up in this iteration will be producing exhibitions, displays, staff, training, and so forth that makes them confident in maintaining their already pre-existing institutional values about LGBTIQA plus inclusivity in these spaces and the important role they play in maintaining those values being visible within the art and heritage sector. So it's a really we're a really important piece of work that we're really proud of, but moreover, proud that the sector has really stood up and stood behind it as well.

SPEAKER_03 13:17

Especially, I don't know if you want to talk about this, but maybe briefly mention um the the Supreme Court ruling this year because for our listeners, we have listeners across 67 countries, and they may not be aware of what happened this year. So uh over these two last years, there's been a movement that is quite the contrary of what's um of that inclusivity in in museums and galleries.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

That's right. So so in the broader sector, we've had EHRC ruling, so so that's you know, our Supreme Court saying that uh ruling against trans people's existence, basically, and their right to exist, so accessing public services, um uh health services, toilets, etc. Uh, it's a a really, really significant setback in trans rights and protection in the UK. Um, it's also completely unpoliceable, so it's our sectors, our our our arts and culture sector particularly has fought back against it in just even in practical terms. How on earth can we stop people using the toilets in our venues? What do you want us to do, police their bodies? Um, etc. etc. But then we we also have the Office for Students ruling against trans inclusive curriculum. Um, again, this for example, within within my university, which is an arts university, um what what how many students do we have who aren't queer on campus? You know, so they are the future of the art sector. Um, taking away transinclusive, um, transpositive, queer positive curriculum is a really significant step as well. So we're waiting for that to be enacted. So to have the museum and heritage and gallery and archive sector stand up and go, we will not stand behind this, we will push back against it, and we don't think it's workable, even if you tried to make us do it, um, I think really shows that the creative sector has always been a leading sector for who we are as UK society on the ground, who we are as people and communities, that hopefully will ultimately speak louder than the media misrepresentation of division that is over-emphasized and inaccurate. Um, certainly the response Jimmer and I see to our work and our communities need the way they thrive within creative and cultural spaces as well as produce within these spaces, um, speaks to exactly exactly the opposite end of the spectrum.

SPEAKER_03 15:51

Well uh we're we're going to talk about your other project, Museum of Transology, uh, because this exhibition talisman is uh joint forces uh between two um entities, two organizations. So Cardian Arts, Gemma, you founded it a year ago, wasn't it? Uh more or less, and there's a charity associated with it. So explain your project a little bit and then we'll move on to the Museum of Transology.

SPEAKER_02 16:21

Cardian Arts, it's a non a new non-profit, and a group of us found founded it together. Um, I'm just one of many people behind it. And um we came together last year to work on an exhibition called Ultraviolet that was on in Soho in London for just one week, and it was another fantastic group exhibition of queer and trans artists that was looking at queer visual coding in contemporary art practice. The exhibition it was on for one, I think it was like nine days, and we had thousands of people through the door. We did two events, both of them, it was like the the street in Soho had to shut down because it was full of people. The the turnout was really mind-blowing, and so those of us who did the show said there was obviously a demand for this kind of programming in London still, and people had travelled from all around the UK actually to come to the exhibition, which we've also seen for Talisman, the same. Um, and so yeah, we decided to come together and formalise an organization which um we called Cardian. It's it's the name of the organisation comes from two Gaelic words, one meaning family and one meaning protection. Um, and we've put them together. I joke that I also just really like the sound of the name because it makes me think of Celine Dion, um, which the gays appreciate. Um but um yeah, we have the there's kind of we have a big uh ambitious mission, I would say, as an organization. Um the there's three parts to our mission. The first one is that we champion the work of queer and trans artists. Number two is we program events um that foster a sense of belonging for our community, and then the third one is that we fundraise for our charity partner, and our charity partner is AKT. AKT are the only charity in the UK who are working with queer and trans young people currently facing homelessness. And so the kind of programming that we've been doing as an organization is one big annual exhibition every year. Um, we did a performance night event at the ICA in March. Well, and that was and that was again brilliantly attended, and you know, we we made sure that half of the tickets were available for free, and then there were options to pay, and then pay plus donation, and then people also could donate on the night. Um, and we had amazing, amazing talent performing at that night. We had artist Evan Shudpo, we had um a brilliant singer called Dilemma, we had um the duo Eve Um Stanton and Florence Peak, and then Tom Rasmussen closed out the night with a very sexy uh musical performance. Um, and then we also do other smaller, more intimate programming where um we host dinners for artists where we work really closely with artists to think about um what they need at a key moment in their career, perhaps their early career or a pivotal moment in their career. Um we had one of those dinners last night, which is why I look so tired because as you heard, I was doing camera.

SPEAKER_03 19:43

You look amazing at two o'clock this morning.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Was it Celine Dion Dem?

SPEAKER_02 19:47

It was Celine Dion. Yeah. I do a very good uh my heart will go on.

SPEAKER_03 19:56

If that's true, I'm very impressed.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

And I'm sober and I still do it well.

SPEAKER_03 20:00

I think yeah, there's an opportunity here now to do it right now.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

I'm also now I've had too much there's a limit on how much you can do it in 24 hours. You have to catch me on a different day on a different day. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, and then we're also about to launch a residency programme with Cardian. Um, we do, yeah, so that's we have a brilliant Scottish artist coming down to London for the month of August. He's going to be resident in a really fabulous property in Hammersmith that has a very long queer history. BBC3 made a radio documentary about the um property called a most queer house. Um, and so yeah, we're bringing in artists there, and I mean there's lots and lots of projects that we're doing, and a lot of it involves partnering with other organizations. Um and so for this exhibition, you know, I was thinking about who would be a good person for us to partner with on the exhibition, and because of everything that's been going on in the UK, in North America, and in the wider world around trans rights, it it just felt like a really good opportunity to work with EJ in the Museum of Transology. I often say that the Museum of Transology exhibition that I saw back then really gave me insight into trans experience that I wouldn't otherwise have had, and I have a huge number of trans people in my life, in my chosen family, um, and I feel that I'm able to show up for them better because you know of being able to engage with the Museum of Transology, and then obviously EJ's continued doing fantastic work over the last decade. The show at um CSM Transcestry that just closed was just incredible, and to see the community turn out was brilliant. So, yeah, I was really, really delighted that EJ agreed to work with us on this exhibition, and what has kind of come out of it is just really brilliant. It's a group show called Talisman. And we called it that because we were having conversations with artists, and these themes kept coming up around symbols, objects, or people that we're turning to to keep us safe in these increasingly challenging times.

SPEAKER_03 22:17

So just to kind of close the chapter of this co-curation, maybe um it would be a great opportunity, EJ, for you to talk a little bit about the Museum of Transology that Gemma has described brilliantly because it really is the fine detail that humanizes uh rather than um vilifies or or pathologizes um this particular project that you've organized. So can you tell us a little bit uh about how you've come to define this project and then what it is um and and how it exists out there? Because it's not a brick and stone museum, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:57

Yeah, that's right. First of all, just um want to emphasize how grateful we were to have this invitation by Cardian Arts and from Gemma to to work on this project. It's been an absolute delight because at the end of the day, what felt m really right about it is that we're both not-for-profit. We both care about fostering belonging for our community through the arts. And you know, the the intention of trying to provide a space um for our community to be visible but also to be with each other. All of these these values aligned for me with the work at the Museum of Transology. The Museum of Transology is now the world's largest collection of objects and stories relating to trans lives. We've been collecting for 10 years, um, and it's a material culture collection. So people donate an object, but they write their story in handwriting on a little brown tag that's attached to it. And so we archive the tags as well, which means we turn the story into a piece of material culture as well. By archiving this, we we enter into a realm where you can't de-accession the stories and remove them. So those stories are protected in time as well. And so we've got very clear ambitions when we've been going through it. When I set it up, it was that we would provide a space for trans people to talk about their experiences rather than be talked about. You know, it started in 2014, and this was the year that Laverne Cox appeared on the front cover of Time magazine with the heading Trans Tipping Point, and really it was the year that the whole world all of a sudden went trans tastic. Quite in, you know, there were a couple of social forces that at play, but essentially this was like, oh my god, they used the toilet, you know, like the whole world just kind of woke up in this ballistic trans awakening. And so it felt like we were being spoken about, that we were being, you know, I have really clear ambitions that by bringing people's voices into this heritage and art space, that we can fight the legal systems that criminalise us, the medical systems that pathologize us, the media that spectacularizes our lives and bodies, and the politicians who debate and demonize us. We would put the humanity back into the trans experience by talking through our own lens and our own lives. And so we say that the collections by us, about us, and for us, and we've now got over a thousand objects in the collection and two thousand protest placards, and they all went on show for the exhibition, the 10-year anniversary exhibition at Central St. Martin's at the Letherby Gallery, um, only closed a couple of a month or so ago. But the most important thing as well is that we use curation and an exploration of it as a practice of care to engage the community. So there, I always say there's a thousand curators of the Museum of Transology. Every single thing that we do, down to the collecting, the donation, the object entry forms, the cataloguing, the mounting, the exhibition, but everything is done by trans people, all members of the community. So we had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people work on the show over three years. But we've we have we meet weekly and we archive every single week, and and groups of us turn up and it's intergenerational and it's free, and it's about really sharing the skills, but also presenting people with an opportunity to feel like they have a place in history. If if you don't see yourself on a wall of a museum, you're made historically homeless, you're taught that your people have never contributed to society, that that you're not worth, you're destined to not be remembered. So actually fighting back against that and going, come and write your story and protect other people's stories enables us as a community to be empowered to understand that we are actively contributing to the world around us. Um and I think really that that engagement with arts and culture and archiving and curating an exhibition display as a collaborative community process is is a really um, it holds a very specific magic power. And in a way, that brings us back full circle to talking about this exhibition. You know, what is that talismanic power? What really is it about how we can use our art and our queerness and our talents and our transness to find each other, but to find our way in the world when the world sometimes feels overwhelmingly challenging. Um, this is a way of a pathway out of that, um, where we don't just compromise and settle for being accepted, where we go, we are fabulous, and you need us as much as we need you, right? I mean, you just have to go to Pride the other weekend. There's many, many more straight people there than there were queer people. They want a part of our culture, man. So I think there is a magic there that deserves to be celebrated, and we're we're touching on that with this idea of of the talisman in this show.

SPEAKER_03 28:11

It's so beautiful to uh listen to you because both of you are real curators. You cannot wait to talk about the exhibition, and I'm trying to contain you because I still I have another question because this is Exhibitionistas, and I started the podcast by inviting people who weren't professionals in the art field to discuss specific exhibitions together and turn them into episodes. And so I'm always curious about exhibitions, and I'm also curious about where it clicked for each one of us. So, Gemma, I uh read somewhere that your grandmother uh introduced you to art, which kind of was kind of a double-edged sword because you were interested in art, but at the same time, not a lot of representativity in the art that you were seeing, and you weren't seeing people that interested you and that you felt connected to. So was it there and then that it clicked for you, the art thing, and that you felt that that was your thing, or was it much later? Um, because I know you didn't study art right away, you studied um what was it? Politics? Mathematics I forget.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

I did maths and artificial intelligence. What? That's why I'm good with a budget, EJ.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

I mean, game on, baby.

SPEAKER_03 29:28

Wait, wait, wait, artificial intelligence.

SPEAKER_02 29:31

Yeah, I uh before it was really a thing. I had seen that film with Jude Law in it. I thought it looked like it was gonna be cool. I I did not do well in my AI studies at all.

SPEAKER_03 29:43

Um so anyway, um moving on from there, that would be a whole other episode.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

Thank you for that very thoughtful question. Um yeah, it's something I've thought about a lot recently, because my um my my oldest who is six has um started talking about um my my my grandmother a lot. She died before he was conceived. I was we were trying to get pregnant with him um when she was dying, and we talked about it a lot, and she left some things for him and for the kids. You know, she'd really hoped that we were gonna have a family. She knew that we were trying. Um, but this funny thing, and she was a huge influence in my life, my grandmother. Um, she went to an art school um when she was a teenager in Sheffield in the 50s, so um she knew all about the gays because that's how her friends were, and actually, I have a very elderly friend who's 92 that my wife and I help care for, um, and he was her best friend. His brother went who's was also a fabulous gay, went to that art school with my granny. So um, yeah, there were gay men in her life a lot. Um, she was a big old hag and like me and loved it. Um, but she um she was very, very she was, I mean, she was a really talented artist, she was really passionate about art. She actually had a scholarship to go come to London and go to the Slade, but um she got married to my granddad, got married to my granddad instead and ran her parents', she worked in her parents' shoe shop um and didn't uh didn't ever go and do her studies. But um, so I think when I came along and expressed an interest in art, she was really happy to have someone that was into it with her. And we visited a lot of galleries together, and I really, you know, there's some really kind of vivid memories I have. I there's a there's this self-portrait of Rembrandt, age 51, that hangs in the National Gallery of Scotland, and I and it the the way you used to walk into the main gallery space, you'd walk in and it was kind of hung behind you where you'd just come from, and I can remember walking through into that room, and then she turned around and saw it, and she went and it was like a real kind of gasp. She was it like I could see that how moved she was by this painting, and you know, I remember things like that. I think she kind of passed that on, like how to feel about art. Um, but the reason I mention my six-year-old and her is because she my grandmother lived with my parents in their house at Sheffield, and um she passed away, and they've just recently sold their house, moved to a smaller house, and so there used to be a bedroom, granny Ann's room, at my parents' house, and that that that bedroom doesn't exist anymore, and we have a very, very small um uh box room in our house, which is rarely empty actually. We've usually got some lovely young friend staying in the room. But my son Blaze has recently started calling that bedroom Granny Ann's room, and I I don't know why, I don't know what, but I feel like maybe he's took they're talking to each other or something. There's some lovely connection, it's very sweet, and he's very like her, and yeah, it's kind of a funny thing, and he's it's he's really like that's it. It just one day he was like, Oh yeah, Granny Anne's room, and he only calls that bedroom Granny Ann's room, it's really bizarre, even if like our friend, even when our friend is living in that room and it's their bedroom, he's like, No, no, Granny Ann's room. So um, so yeah, she's the one that taught me to love art, but the point you said about like it not necessarily being representational for me and myself, and I you know it's true, I didn't see myself reflected in art, so I loved it. I loved the technique of art, I loved you know, seeing art and the craft of it, but in terms of the content, you know, I I yeah, I think I probably struggled to connect, and but actually a big turning point for me was when I was at university doing maths and AI, I was able to pick up really how much everyone laps at this. So sorry. Listen, I can do a really good spreadsheet. My finances are in order.

SPEAKER_03 33:57

But you know what? Why I would while I was listening to you, I was thinking, these people work so hard, you work so much, and now I know why. At least for you, Jim. I don't know what EJ, I don't know what EJ's secret is, but yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 34:12

I do, I do, I do work hard, but I'm also I don't know, I'm a classic addict. My relationship with my work is not necessarily healthy. Um, but um yeah, I um when I was studying, I was able to pick up um at like secondary subjects, and uh art history was one of the subjects I picked up and I just absolutely loved it. But the key was at Edinburgh University where I was studying, there was also a joint honours degree, art history and fine art, when many of the students on my art history course were also practicing artists and had art studios in the art school, and so I used to go and hang out with them in their studios, and that was the moment that I was like, this is the world I want to be in. This I could see a role for myself. I could I could tell I knew I wanted to work with artists, I wanted to build platforms to present their work, I wanted to find ways to connect art with different audiences, I wanted to help artists tell this tell stories about their work. That was it was it was getting to know artists that um really changed it for me.

SPEAKER_03 35:19

How fantastic and uh incredible because the first thing you described was someone else reacting, someone you loved reacting to an artwork, and now you're talking about the artists and how they worked and how you connected with them. So it's such a communitarian um sort of foundational um relation to art. It's really incredible. Um IJ, same question for you. Were you connected to art in your childhood teens? Was it a later um click? How did it happen for you?

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Certainly for the Museum of Transology, there's a very specific moment. And it was I I mentioned that I started it in 2014, the collection, and it was sort of this we refer to it as the trans tipping point. I'm actually a social historian, so the kind of curation that I do really relies on finding stories and showing stories and unpacking the context within which they exist. Um, and so it's just been a real joy working with artists directly to hear about the work that they're producing. You know, that's that's kind of where I jump in. And I at the same time as doing that that that was happening in 2014, um, I was working for the National Trust, uh curating um a very large collection of fashion and textiles. There were 14,000 pieces in the collection and dating back hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. And I became a little bit obsessed with this idea of freezing rooms in time. This is what we do classically with the National Trust and and large sort of stately homes and heritage houses is we set up the dining room and they might have lived here like this. And you walk through and you step back in time, and you think that you know the tables and the tablecloths and the these belong to the family, and they might have actually touched that cup. And Charles Baudelaire famously says that the the beauty of collecting, the magic of collecting, the miracle of collecting is that we collect ourselves. I I was also going through some gender-affirming surgery, and I was lying in my hospital room, and I was looking around at all the things in the hospital room, going, Where's my frozen room in time? This is this is such a widely shared trans experience that people could step in and by stepping in could potentially understand how important and intimate and and and in so many ways relatable the experience is if we just had a space for these artifacts and to set up these kind of kind of trans understandings. Um, as I was sort of thinking about this, my best friends came up um to visit me in the hospital room, and one of them stuck their hand through the door, and it was holding a balloon from the gift shop downstairs.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

It's a boy! And so I swing talked the nurse and she let me take the sheets and the pillowcases and the little paper cups that I had my medicine in and literally everything.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

She let me just take the whole room, and I had my It's a Boy collection, and that was the first display that I did of the Museum of Transology was to recreate this frozen room in time in using the curatorial methodologies that actually I'd got from the most sort of traditional heritage organization in the UK and re-appropriated it to make it incredibly timely and incredibly queer and to respond exactly to what was going on today so that we didn't forget it tomorrow, because otherwise we were just gonna fall through the cracks and into the historical abyss once again, you know. The the idea with the um, you know, we learned a lot in 2017 when it was the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales here in in the UK. Um it takes, you know, it can take a couple of years to get particularly a social history exhibition or a mixed media exhibition together in museums across the UK. So around 2014, all the museums were going, ah, we're really rubbish LGBT representation.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

What are we gonna do? How are we gonna get something together for 2017 in time when we don't know what's in our collections?

SPEAKER_01 39:43

And so that couple of years lead time to think about what was in the collections, we also realized that a lot of the social history in the collections, as opposed to creative output by queer artists, were the medical records, were the criminal records, were, you know, all the same things we were potentially going to have to rely upon if we didn't start building a trans collection. We wouldn't be learning from the queer past. And what's the point of doing all this queer history for the wider world if we're not learning from it ourselves within the community, right? So that's when I was like, we are just gonna end up with criminal records about the trans community in a hundred years' time. We're just gonna have these newspaper reports again in a hundred years' time. We have to do something about this. So it was all those sort of cogs colliding. I don't know if cogs collide. Maybe you could give me an update on that with your AI skills, Gemma, but but but it certainly was all the pieces falling into place that was born of a very personal experience, sort of seguing into how can I curate for social change? How can we use curation as a force that actually is more than more more than a spectacular, more than a show? It has intentionality and and and power.

SPEAKER_03 41:05

Yeah, yeah. That's leading to my to my next question, um, which is the the reframing of exhibition making, because you're both curators, and obviously there's always these kind of identity politics thrown at us, you know, saying, Oh, is there a you know a female way of making art? What does that even mean? But you're reframing things. So, how how do you think that uh your missions reframe curating in particular? And maybe that could lead us to the exhibition talisman that we're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 41:40

I mean this is something that I thought about an awful lot when I was writing my book because you know I needed to, if I was gonna write a book called queer art, I needed to understand firstly what I meant by queer art, and secondly, why why it was even relevant to have a book about queer art. Um and so for the purposes of that book, I took queer art to mean anything that refers to the queer experience implicitly or explicitly. Um and the reason it felt very relevant to put all of that work together in a book was because applying a queer lens to art can provide new ways to connect with the art. Um, you know, I I often use David Hockney as an example. I knew all about David Hockney because I'm from Yorkshire and because he's one of the most famous artists in the world, and certainly one of the most famous living artists, and um I had seen loads of his work, but I and I had studied two art history degrees, I think, before I really thought about the queerness in his work, and the queerness in David Hockley's work is extremely explicit. You know, he was making etchings in the 1960s of two boys in bed together and talking very openly about defending his way of life. Um, but art history has not framed the work as queer, it's not celebrated the queerness in his work at all. Um, I mean, at all is wrong. It there are people that have been doing that work, absolutely. Um, you know, I think a real turning point for me was the queer British art exhibition at Tape Britain that Claire Barlow curated, um, that made me think about the the relevance of applying a queer lens to art history and to art. Um, and so you know that I guess that's kind of where I come from in terms of like my art historical training and my background, my art historical background. But when it comes to contemporary art, it feels really, really important that people who wouldn't necessarily ordinarily engage with art or are And culture, or think that art and culture is that relevant to them in their lives. It's I think it's very important that people find ways to connect with the work that reflects them and their community. You know, art can be a very powerful way of making sense of your own identity by looking at other people's perspectives and experiences articulated through their art. Something that we've talked about a lot in this show is that there are lots of examples where something made by an artist through their art practice, it can can maybe be the only way, the best way, or the only way of articulating something that is otherwise quite challenging to articulate. Can't just be said through words, for example. You know, with art you can really express a feeling. Um, you know, so with my curatorial work, I feel like it's it is relevant to apply a queer lens, but I think that can be done in different ways, and it's important that it's always done in thoughtful ways. So, for example, I would never curate an exhibition that was called queer art, that was just a group of artists brought together because they are queer. That feels really reductive. That doesn't feel like we're really understanding and appreciating their art, it doesn't feel like we're having a progressive, sensitive conversation about the topics that they're handling in their work. Making a book about that topic is different because that book didn't exist. You know, we should have had that book decades ago, and that book didn't exist, and you know, there wasn't anything out there that was super accessible and that anybody could pick up. But when it comes to exhibition making, you know, I think that queerness can be part of the conversation. So, you know, for us, we're talking about talisman, we're talking about these things that people turn to, the magic, the power, and the resilience that comes from our community and the tools that we use to help us find that power. Um, you know, and I I did an exhibition a couple of years ago at the Leslie Lohman Museum in New York called Dreaming of Home, that was all about home and what that might mean to queer and trans folk. You know, whether that's about domesticity, whether it's about family, whether it's about a house, or if it's about moving, migration, chosen family, feeling at home in your own body. You know, these topics can mean so much to people, to audiences, but a queer perspective on those topics is something different and unique, and it should be given space. You know, the exhibition I've just done um just opened in Norfolk at Walterton that you mentioned, the two-person show with Maggie Hamling and Roe Robertson. That exhibition is called Sea State. It was conceived in response to the Sainsbury Centre local, the local institutions um programme, all about the the question they were asking, they were posing was um will the sea survive us? And so they I was invited to do an exhibition in collaboration with Simon Oldfield, the artistic director at Walterton, responding to that theme. And the two artists I thought of, first of all, that I know work very closely with the sea are Maggie Hamling and Roe Robertson. They're also both queer artists, and they are thinking about the sea as you know, a kind of very powerful metaphor for many life experiences. The sea is something that really resonates with a lot of queer people. You know, there's the themes around mermaids, about unconditional acceptance of the sea in the water. Um, somebody, an artist I'm working with on a news show, said to me the other day, um, maybe it's about the sea. When you look out to sea, you can just keep going. You know, I think there's something kind of like this hopeful potential there. So, you know, that's an that exhibition in Norfolk is about the sea, but the queerness that those two artists bring to that topic is relevant and is worth having, you know, worth discussing.

SPEAKER_03 48:10

Yeah, it's funny because I was at the Kurto the other day, there was this exhibition of the a German collection that is very close to the Kurto collection, and there was a painting by Toulouse-Lautrek uh called Shahukao, um depicting a woman facing um the spectator, and I was so struck by that painting, and I thought you could see that woman in the street today, the the stance, the masculinity, you know, there was something so special about it. And I was with a friend who told me the story about Shoyuko who I didn't know. Um, and this was uh a clown, um, so a female artist who performed as a clown, which at the time was quite revolutionary and openly lesbian. And then I uh went to the Musée d'Orsay website to learn more about this story. The there's a description of uh the room, it's another painting, the room that she's in, and someone is in the back, and there's a mention of that person potentially being a client. There's no explanation of the relationship of Toulouse Lotrec with her, particularly, of including her in El the whole catalogue of uh prostitutes that he so all of that history is lacking. So you don't understand that character and you don't understand that physicality and that pride and that stance. So the history is truncated. But of course, you can talk about prostitution because of course, you know, that's something that is relevant always, you know, for the place of women.

SPEAKER_02 49:51

Yeah, if it's the if it's the the idea of the city, but being discussed being discussed through a misogynistic framework, I'm sure. Um it's really it's I mean that happens all the time. Historically, that is those LGBTQIA plus stories have been omitted or actively erased. Um, and you know, there's a lot of work going into uncovering those stories, and a lot of the kind of archival work that EJ was speaking about is just really key to that. It's interesting that um you kind of gave the example of Musée d'Orsay because they've had uh kind of, I say I would call it a little bit of controversy around this recently. They just um had an exhibition by the painter Gustav Kaybach, um who painted lots of sexy men, some with their bums in the air when they were scrubbing floors and stuff, getting out of baths. And in that exhibition, they did, in the exhibition text and the curation acknowledged the queer possibility of the work. You know, it's it it's a according to the museum, impossible to know how the artist identified what the intention was because there's no archival material to back that up. Um, although I'm pretty sure if we were to really dig we'd find it. But um it, you know, it queerness in the work, it it it's subjective, and I think a lot of the time it can be about the reading and how we read the work. Um, but there was, yeah, there was uproar about that queer possibility being applied to that artist, but then you know, we see other examples like um the painter Lotta Lazerstein, who painted herself and her female models, and again, it's like it's giving lesbian, but no museum is ever acknowledging that, and the lesbians are like, Why aren't you acknowledging that these people might be lesbians, you know? So, yeah, I think it it people find in terms of particularly with art history and museum displays, to to have acknowledgement of those lives can be very, very validating, even if it's a question, it's just a question to consider. It can be really validating and it can be really important, but there's a lot of fear around that and around doing it. I think one of the great things about the way EJ works is thinking, you know, like with the trans inclusion guidance, it's it's thinking about it's not just one project, it's thinking about passing it on, and actually, a lot of the way that we've collaborated around the exhibition talisman is we've been working with EJ's community curators that work with him at the Museum of Transology, most of whom are quite young or early career, or a pivotal moment in their life where their identity and their career might be intersecting, and we can work with those people and pass on our experiences and know that these people are going to be going out and making their own exhibitions.

SPEAKER_03 52:58

Yeah, speaking of which, uh, EJ, this idea that of validation that Gemma was mentioning, um, you work really hard towards uh not reducing the idea of validation of just a sort of empty idea of representation, but more an idea of learning with a history and having a real um embodied knowledge of um people's lives. And so my question to you uh as well is this idea um is this question pertaining to curating? So, how do you reframe your curating precisely to open up this idea of validation and and um and and how do the projects then take different shapes than maybe a museum exhibition, let's say?

SPEAKER_01 53:44

Um I I think they do take the shape of museum exhibitions. That can be the final outcome, um, certainly in my work, but I think that I think very well, I do, I think very closely about what does it mean to be trans in exhibition making? What does trans curatorial practice, well, what does transness contribute to curatorial practice at large? How can we impact upon the sector with uh radical new forms and ways of thinking through what we do? Um, and and at the heart of it is embedding the values of the community in the practice. So this can be uh really obvious but really important approaches um in the trans community. We've got a very strong commitment to anti-racist intersectional approaches, we've got very, very strong accessibility politics, you know, the idea, all of these these commitments, um, you know, uh feminist values, etc., all these these commitments come together at one to represent what the trans community stands for, because trans liberation is liberation for all. That's that's that's that's the catchphrase that we use. The idea being that if we can be freed from gender stereotypes, gender normativity, this this will benefit everyone. It's really key to my practice that we bring community into the process of the exhibition making when they're trying to find themselves and tell their stories, rather than needing bed-notch evidence of people having had sex or non-heteronormative lives. You know, a lot of a lot of queer people in the past did still have to get married, did still have to live to their families, etc., right? So just just finding the evidence is not the the pressure to find evidence of that is not the same as as any heterosexual experiences in the curatorial world putting on an exhibition going, hang on, are you sure that they really were heterosexual? Because those pieces of evidence apparently exist institutionally, you know, and it's it's not just, I think this approach that we've built over the last 10 years of upskilling the community, but always having all these core values at play in the work has fed out into wider projects that don't necessarily need to be trans projects to see these methodologies put to work, um, but they are born of the trans experience of needing acknowledgement that we exist and and are owed an honor and a place in society. So, for example, an exhibition I did uh late 23, 24 in the at the Ditching Museum of Arts and Crafts was called Double Weave Bourne and Allen's Modernist Textiles. And Ditchling has an incredible history of arts and crafts and particularly in design, and the museum was turning 10 in the new building, basically. And they approached me to do an exhibition because the founder of the ex of the museum, um, Hilary Bourne, uh, her had lived and made textiles, modernist textiles, with her partner for decades. All their lives they'd lived together. Um, and they had um studios across Ditchling, they they had galleries in in London, um, they produced the all the textiles that, for example, um hang in the uh uh um World Exhibition, uh World Festival Hall in London, they made the textiles that were the first textiles in the first ever jet planes in the UK. They did all the textiles that were in um Ben Hur, the epic movie. So these were incredible, incredible work. When when um uh they went away on holiday later in life, um, they were staying in um a bed and breakfast up north. The bed and breakfast caught on fire. Um uh um Hillary jumped out of the window and her partner did not and perished in the fire. And she went into deep, deep, deep mourning and moved back to Titling and couldn't get out of her mourning until her sister, more than a decade later, said the school church, the school, school building's up for sale. Why don't you build it and start a new why don't you buy it and start a museum and put all your textiles with with with your partner in there? And it was this this foundation of this entire museum, and their relationship was never spoken about. So for the 10-year anniversary, I got 10 women from across Sussex, where Ditchling is, and they all contributed a different story and a different reading of these women's lives and relationship and work. Some of it was was modernist history and the way that women are overlooked and women makers are overlooked, particularly if they are in a craft modernism, you know, modernist practice like textiles. Um, we had art historians, textile historians, dress historians, we had a dike from the local community. Um, but what we all came back to at the end of the project is that the body of work that these women have produced throughout their lifetime together was absolutely, absolutely founded upon the strength of their intimacy and their relationship. And that's what the queerness was. That's what the lesbianism of this story is. Their work stands on its own. But by understanding that their relationship was part of their creativity and their really, really, really um acute business skills, for example, by understanding that they ran the business, they ran the weaving studios, they ran the dyeing, they swapped vegetables to make dyes with other local um lesbian um lovers in the area that also had little weaving houses. You know, like this this is about this history that that brings Ditchling to life because it went across multiple sites of making. It brings modernism to life at the very highest cutting edge in London in the 1950s. You know, it brings women's technology and business acumen to life, but it's still all drawn out of their lesbianism and their relationship, you know. So it was the process of transing the exhibition making by applying my community practice and the values of letting us speak for ourselves and bring multiple voices and working collectively to make the exhibition. Those trans values in a lesbian exhibition were actually what made it so beautiful and multivocal, you know, and I think it is this idea that we can change this elite mode of highly educated, hierarchical, cis white male, upper middle class, if not more elite, practitioners that are the curators of the world and actually bring in people with lived experience, but moreover, passion for their communities and their communities' cultural outputs that that really can drive a shift in in uh in curatorial practice at large, I think.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:56

In the exhibition Talisman, um there's also this effort, I believe, to also decentre from London so that you have artists from all across the UK, for example, uh Richard Maguire, who has these absolutely incredible tiny drawings that are so complex and led.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:14

When we started putting Cardian Arts together as an organization, one of the things that we really, really wanted to make sure we did was that we presented work by artists from right across the UK. Um, you know, there is more stuff happening in London often than there is across the rest of the country. Um, and so yeah, that felt very important. And yeah, I mean we treat all of the artists exactly the same, even though there is Lebana Himid in the show who's about to represent Britain in the Venice Biennale. Um, and then we've got some very early career artists in the exhibition, or we've got artists who've been making work in for a long time but haven't necessarily had that many exhibition opportunities. So um yeah, I I would say that it's very diverse in terms of artist career stage as well as artist identity and the mediums that they're working with and the way they approach their work. Um I I think both EJ and I feel very passionately about um providing opportunity for intergenerational conversation, um, and so having artists who you know, and I think this is something as well is that to be queer often involves queering time, particularly to be trans, you know, when people are finding their authentic identities later in life and kind of starting all over again at certain points, and lots of lots of people who identify as LGBTQIA plus, um, you know, figure things out at at different points, and depending on where you live and what access you've had to different reference points and culture and role models, you know, stuff can happen later or younger, you know, it just all really depends. And so I was sat with a couple of friends the other day, two trans women, one who is several decades older than the other, and the younger one was really kind of mentoring and supporting the older one because the younger one had transitioned much younger and had known she, and probably partly because she was growing up in a different era, and you know that so I think the queers are very good at turning the world upside down and um using that to our strengths, and so I would say that's kind of how we've approached this exhibition actually. In terms of highlights, it's wonderful to work with Lebena, particularly in such an exciting time for her. She's so busy, and it means so much that she contributed work to this show. It means so much to the artist to be exhibiting alongside her. Similarly, with Jessie Darling, you know, these are artists who the earlier career artists in the exhibition really look up to. But then it's so exciting to be presenting artists like Zach, you mentioned who's a brilliant, brilliant painter, who's only really focused on painting in the last couple of years, and they're almost 40. Um, but then we've got really young artists as well, and artists like Emily Poe's put beautiful light books in the show that she recently exhibited at South Park Galleries. Um, Ajamu X, who is a legendary photographer, inspires generations of artists. I'm sure EJ is now going to tell you about one of the artists that he brought to the show, Wayne Lucas, who is brilliant and has had such an incredible response to his installation.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:45

Hasn't he though? It's been so gorgeous.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:48

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:51

Wayne's a um lived through the um 80s AIDS crisis here in in London. Um, it was under Margaret Thatcher. The media was misrepresenting and causing absolute hysteria. Um really, it's very similar to what we're experiencing now with the trans community, you know, this this this media furor that is that's a that's that's not speaking the truth, basically. Um, and Wayne has produced recreations using found council doors that were the same as the ones that he was familiar with from this period when he was a young man in the 80s. And on the council doors in the toilets, they used to have horrific graffiti carved into them that was homophobic graffiti. Um, one of one of the ones he remembers really clearly was G-A-Y, Got AD, you know. So so all these kind of really, really rough, um, very intimidating, frightening kind of language being used. In these public spaces, particularly public men's spaces. But the other thing that he experienced, even though he was confronted with this homophobia, was the idea that there were other gay men out there. You know, that there were other queers out there. And so it was a nuanced space for him of mixed emotions, mixed vulnerabilities, you know, and so he's recreated the doors and he's he's a beautiful artist, beautiful, beautiful artist, figuratively, all sorts of things. He's got lots of different practices, embroidery, all sorts of things. And he's carved in the graffiti, but then he's put in a very fine gold leaf into the scratchings of these abusive words, you know. He's put glory holes in, but he's embroidered them so delicately, actually, the wool into the wood in different shades of pink, you know, just the skill and artistry, but the sheer beauty of it, but a very controversial idea, you know. And so the preciousness of the multitude of experiences being reawakened through the materiality of the objects, but also the sharing of this experience because he hangs the doors one after another so on hinges, so you can actually walk through them as if you are cruising and you are going through the spaces. And so he passes on knowledge intergenerationally about being a queer man who had to navigate his own identity and his own desire, but also public attitudes, onto a next generation who today find that this kind of intimacy and and sexual awakening is often achieved digitally through apps online. So it's a different culture, and so he's passing on knowledge about the community that goes beyond just fear, you know, but does recount that to a younger generation. And I just I think it's a really, really quite magic example of the way in which art can talk in a very complex experiential way, um, through through these incredible works that we're so lucky to have such talented artists being even able to conceptualize, let alone produce. Um I think I think it's just a really magic example of of how it keeps our own culture alive as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:27

Thank you so much for um this conversation. Thank you so much, Joanna, for um inviting us on and for talking about the exhibition with us and for your thoughtful questions. We really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:38

I wish you a pleasant summer. Thank you again for your generosity.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:42

Thanks, Joanna. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:43

Thanks so much. Thank you so much for listening. It was a pleasure to celebrate Pride Month with this fantastic interview and to explore the recent and current highlights of Gemma Rolls Bentley and E. J. Scott's brilliant career. Thanks for listening. We hope you have a great time until the next episode. Stay present, stay exhibitionists, respect yourself and others, and don't forget we visit exhibitions so that you have to. Take care.