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| Blake Lawrence, performance at Hellfire Club, photo Chantel Bann |
Blake Lawrence is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in expanded realms of photography and performance. They make work informed by the material histories, icons and ecologies of drag performance and queer culture in Australia, and where they coalesce with photographic practice in documentation and archiving. They are devoted to responsibility and genealogy outside of biology, inhabiting queer history and design in the present, absence and residue, care, sex and pleasure in a practice-based research.
Borne from Yaegl Land and Waters in Northern NSW, Lawrence currently lives and works on Gadigal Land in Sydney. They are currently undertaking a Doctorate in Philosophy (Design) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). They completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Sydney College of The Arts, and Honours In Design (Photography) at UTS. They have exhibited locally and interstate, at Granville Centre Art Gallery, Firstdraft, Airspace Projects, C3 Contemporary, Blindside, Seventh Gallery, The Walls, Verge and more. They have presented live work at the Sydney Biennale, Brisbane’s Spring Hill Reservoirs, the Art Gallery of NSW and Newcastle’s This Is Not Art. As Canoe they have performed drag at Club Kooky, Tropical Fruits, Falls Festival, Groovin The Moo, Sydney Mardi Gras and more.
During my residency at Gunyah, I plan to commence material explorations for my PhD research project Flaming Galahs (working title), continuing my critical investigation into relationships between design in Australian drag communities (fashion, jewellery, object, performance, etc) and local ecology and geography. I also intend to continue some writing projects, and immerse myself in bushwalking, birdwatching and scuba diving in the local area.
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| Blake Lawrence, A Cathartic Action, 2016 |
You can find out more about Blake's practice on their website blakealanlawrence.com and instagram @blakelawrence
