Walking through Queer: Stories from the NGV Collection is an experience of sensory overload. Classical paintings and busts make way for rumbling video works and mannequins dressed in high fashion. Behind glass, there are objects old and new: an ancient teapot, a pair of Comme des Garçons shoes.
My gaze keeps wandering back to two pieces: one is a huge floral and golden wreath surrounding an image of the artist, Yasumasa Morimura, reimagined as Frida Kahlo. The other is Paul Yore’s 2021 work, The Evacuation of Mallacoota: an enormous abstract patchwork of textures, faces and colours, reflecting on the 2019 bushfires. Two works, so different from one another, yet both hold me gently as I continue through.
