Last week Out Wellington Inc held an art exhibition in Thistle Hall, Under the Rainbow. It was pretty mean. There was some neat artwork and some not so neat artwork, all submitted by people of Wellington’s queer community and relating to their experiences as a queer person. These pieces were sold off in a blind auction. The proceeds of these paintings go towards the next Out in the Square (Wellington’s GLBT fair).
Rainbow Labour MPs Grant Robertson and Charles Chauvel both submitted pieces, and to be honest they both kinda munched balls. Charles Chauvel commissioned his cartoonist friend to draw something. It was something to do with his Air New Zealand scandal; it was kinda boring and had nothing to with anything. Grant Robertson did a clever little doodle of the Beehive in rainbow colours, Mrs Williamson from Room 8 would’ve been very impressed I’m sure, as would be his secretary who reminded him 15 minutes before he needed to submit it. But in the end that doesn’t really matter, they gave something, it produced publicity and a decent amount of dough for Out Wellington.
But there was cool stuff too, don’t worry, like some photos from Gareth Watkins, who left behind his photos of pretty boys and had photos of other things. Those were rather nice and were right beside a lovely collage thing called ‘Internet Profile’, which highlighted the ridiculousness and untruths in internet dating profiles.
Personal favourites of mine though would have to be the beautiful water paintings of androgynous people by Freya Desmarais. These ‘Jackson Pollock’-esque paintings, one of which I didn’t quite win, and this fantastic photo by possibly the best drag queen I’ve ever heard of—it was of her genital area, it was beautiful and magnificent and I’m completely unbiased.
Now I couldn’t make it to the opening of this exhibition, but photos tell me it was packed. However I had many friends at the closing and they filled me in a bit, there was free booze which was apparently missing from the opening *sigh*. They also gave away copies of Gareth Watkins’ books Street Adonis and Street Adonis 2, and some lovely little drag shows by Felicity Froccacino and aforementioned, crotch-flashing queen PacPac Thundercunt.
All in all this was pretty choice eh, if you didn’t make it, shame you missed it but apparently it’s gonna become an annual thing so check out what crazy queer art might pop up next year.