Ain Bailey is a sound artist and DJ. She facilitates workshops considering the role of sound in the formation of identity and recently held a residency at the ICA, London. Exhibitions in 2019 included the group shows: ‘The Range’ at Eastside Projects, Birmingham; ‘RE:Respite’ at Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland, and ‘And We’ll Always Be A Disco In The Glow Of Love’, a solo show at Cubitt Gallery, London. Last year, Bailey was commissioned by Supernormal and Jupiter festivals to create and perform a new work, ‘Super JR’. Currently, following a commission by Serpentine Projects, she is conducting sound workshops with LGBTI+ refugees and asylum seekers, as well as working on commissions for radio for Deutshlandfunk Kultur and Savvy Contemporary’s new radio station, SAVVYZAAR.
Desperate Living C–19
1 May–31 October 2020
Desperate Living C-19 engaged with individuals, informal groups and charities that provide vital services for intergenerational LGBTQIA+ people across London to realise a programme of live events, support groups, workshops, social activities and commissioning through digital and non-physical channels.
Artists Sunil Gupta, Juliet Jacques, Fredde Lanka, Conal McStravick, Raju Rage with the right lube, Virgil B/G Taylor, Ain Bailey and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski and Jamie Beard were commissioned to realise this programme working in partnership with The Outside Project, Mosaic LGBT+ Young Persons’ Trust, Positive East, ELOP and Gendered Intelligence.
As part of our wider Desperate Living programme, which launched in February 2020, this new phase was conceived in response to the effects of COVID-19, while physical workshops and engagement were paused. Individual projects worked to maintain intergenerational dialogues and queer online spaces, enact virtual well-being, explore international perspectives on public health and COVID–19, interrogate the term ‘community’ and critically reflect on the current status of queer and trans healthcare.
Pride Inside with Conal McStravick and Mosaic LGBT+ Young Persons' Trust
1 May–31 October 2020
Pride Inside was a series of queer, collaborative and intergenerational workshops to celebrate Pride at a social distance. Led by artist Conal McStravick and young persons aged 13-19, the project explored how LGBTQIA+ artists, thinkers and activists have shaped Pride as a protest, a celebration and an approach to living queerly. The young persons received art packs with materials as well as weekly contextual resources and invited artists and activists Peter Scott-Presland, Ash Kotak and Linda Stupart, who contributed to sessions, leading towards a final online event during Pride week in July 2020.
Må bra?, organised by Fredde Lanka in collaboration with The Outside Project
1 May–31 October 2020
Må bra? (Feel Well?) was a series of free online wellbeing sessions focusing on sharing and creating tools to help us maintain a sense of wellbeing in the face of the Covid–19 pandemic. Each session was led by an LGBTQIA+ artist who shared their own take on the subject including Soofiya, Ames Pennington, Dex Grodner, Lateisha Davine Lovelace-Hanson and G(end)er Swap.
A relaxing introduction to illustrating with Soof
1 May–31 October 2020
Soof led a series of free online sessions focusing on sharing and creating tools to help maintain a sense of wellbeing in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Desperate Livin, Raju Rage and the right lube
1 May–31 October 2020
Raju Rage and the right lube hosted a series of research, conversation and sharing sessions unpacking the context and intersections of ‘community’, exploring the history of queer movements, and planning positively for the present and future. They conducted workshops around Harm Reduction; the politics and experience of self-medding; hormones, and trans youth. They shared art-activist works online via our website, organised IRL events distributing much-needed supplies and took members of the trans community to trans health clinics. They also co-hosted a grief retreat to support the loss of the trans community as well as ongoing IRL trans social hangouts in London with The Right Lube.
Along the way, they gathered valuable information from transgender people, medical practitioners and organisations about trans health. They have shared this information via Desperate Livin’, an interactive digital archive of materials created by and for members of the trans community, supporting autonomy, health and resilience.
¶ Study Object Room organised by Virgil B/G Taylor
1 May–31 October 2020
An online reading and discussion group organised by Taylor with Tiffany Sia, Sam Richardson, Maya Binyam, Zainab Haidary, Sophia Hussain and Ashkan Sepahvand. Study Object Room represented a free and open space to congregate around a collection of timely, political, unexpected writings. Each session or room revolved around a text, selected by an invited LGBTQIA+ artist/activist or collaborator. Following a reading–out–loud of the text, each text was opened up for examination by the wider group of readers.
A comprehensive online resource, alongside recordings of the sessions, is available below.
Remember to Exhale, Ain Bailey and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski
1 May–31 October 2020
Remember to Exhale is a meditation resource and tool - An exploration of what it means as an artist in this moment to produce and create from a place of rest and restoration.
The notion of rest has been part of an ongoing transatlantic conversation the artists have been participating in. Exhaling stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), and the reminder to exhale is meant to encourage and support relaxation, healing and the recovery of trauma.
The meditation utilises soundscapes created by Sayge Caroll and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski in 2017 at Sayge’s home studio in South Minneapolis. The audio was originally created as part of a performance curated by Nicole M. Smith for Patrick’s Cabaret, Controlled Burn series, held at Intermedia Arts (Minneapolis), titled Stardate:02.20.2017, which included poetry by Keegan Xavi. Bailey and Ahaiwe Sowinski ‘remixed’ the material into a 10-minute meditation.
Alongside this sound work, Bailey and Ahaiwe Sowinski produced a limited-edition screenprint with the generous support of contemporary serigraph artist Aida Wilde. Half of all sales were donated to East London Out Project, a holistic lesbian and gay centre that offers a much-needed range of social, emotional and support services to LGBTQIA+ communities.
Trans 20:20s, Juliet Jacques, in collaboration with Gendered Intelligence
1 May–31 October 2020
Trans 20:20s is an eight-part podcast series created by leading writer and filmmaker Juliet Jacques, looking at life for young trans, nonbinary and gender-diverse people from across the UK and beyond at the start of the 2020s.
Jacques spoke to eight people in their twenties in 2020 about the tumultuous events of the time including lockdown, recent changes in government legislation, and media representation in the UK. Created in collaboration with Isaac, Seth, Jamie, Ren, Shay, Ari, Zach and Zelena, and recorded over video link, the eight episodes foreground these young people as the experts of their own experiences. Topics discussed range from the ups and downs of lockdown, the behaviour of the British media and the power of positive representation to the importance of support groups and their hopes for improvements in trans and non–binary school education.
This unique record looks ahead, with hope, at the decade to come. Trans 20:20s was created in partnership with leading trans-led charity Gendered Intelligence.
A Transgender Journey: Ten years of trans people and the British media, Juliet Jacques and CN Lester in conversation, presented in partnership with Media Democracy Festival 2020
1 May–31 October 2020
Juliet Jacques was in conversation with trans writer, musician and activist CN Lester, author of Trans Like Me, about the impact of Jacques’ A Transgender Journey, which began in The Guardian on 2 June 2010, and the current state of trans media representation in the UK ten years on.
Jamie Beard
1 May–31 October 2020
Illustrator Jamie Beard was commissioned through an open call for emerging LGBTQIA+ creatives to create the graphic identity for Desperate Living C–19. Beard created a series of illustrations, visuals, event posters and identities for different projects that explored the theme of lockdown and its effects.
Desperate Living C–19 was supported by Paul Hamlyn Foundation, The London Community Response Fund administered by City Bridge Trust, the City of London Corporation’s charity funder and The Mila Charitable Organisation. The programme received additional support from Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski is a Minneapolis/London based, mixed media artist and designer, archivist and organiser. She investigates archives in relation to Black and minority ethnic histories and experiences in Britain and throughout the Diaspora, theorising and sharing her ideas on archives as spaces of therapy. Her current research focuses on the synergies between feminist, queer and (self-)archiving as curatorial and artistic practice. She is currently the archivist for the Rita Keegan Archive Project.
Most recent exhibitions include, Show & Tell, Women’s Art Library, Goldsmiths (2015), WARM Guerrillas: Feminist Visions, Minneapolis (2016), Stardate: 02.20.2017, Controlled Burn, Patrick’s Cabaret, Minneapolis (2017), Dunkle Energie/Dark Energy: Feminist Organising, Working Collectively, Vienna’s Fine Art Academy, (2019), Mercator: Distortions and Projections in Discovery, The Triangle, University Arts London (2019).
Juliet Jacques (b. Redhill, 1981) is a writer and filmmaker. She has published two books, most recently Trans: A Memoir (Verso, 2015), which was runner-up in Polari LGBT Literary Salon’s First Book Award in 2016. Her next book, a volume of short stories about the history of British trans and non-binary people entitled Variations, will be published by Influx Press in June 2021. Her short fiction, essays, journalism and criticism have appeared in numerous publications including The Guardian, New York Times, Granta, London Review of Books, Sight & Sound, Art Review, Frieze, Wire, The Washington Post, Five Dials, The New Inquiry and elsewhere.
Her short films have screened in galleries and at festivals worldwide; she also hosts the political arts podcast/radio programme Suite (212) and teaches at the Royal College of Art and elsewhere. She featured on the Independent on Sunday Pink List between 2011 and 2015, and spoke at the PEN International Congress in 2014.
Sunil Gupta (b. 1953, New Delhi India) is a photographer, writer and curator. He has exhibited internationally and published several books, including Christopher Street, 1976 (Stanley/Barker 2018) and Queer (Vadehra Art Gallery/Prestel 2011). His work is in many public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art (NY, USA) Tate Britain (UK), Philadelphia Museum of Art (USA), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (Japan), Arts Council of Great Britain (UK) and Harvard University (Massachusetts, USA). Gupta’s major retrospective ‘From Here to Eternity’ opened at The Photographers’ Gallery in London on 9 October 2020. He is represented by Hales Gallery, Stephen Bulger Gallery and Vadehra Art Gallery.
Fred(rik) Andersson is an Illustrator and ceramicist. Originally from Sweden, for the last five years he has been based in London, working as an independent artist and educator. He works in a bold, colourful style across illustration, comic books and ceramics. His work is humorous and strongly narrative and addresses topics ranging from queer culture, family dynamics and sex.
He is the artistic director for The Outside Project (UK’s first LGBTQIA+ Shelter and community centre) where he raises money, runs workshops and facilitates the Project’s physical and digital spaces alongside the diverse group of stakeholders who use them. Queer community is important to him. He believes that it is critical to recognise our own privilege and give back to the communities that inspire and educate his practice.
Conal McStravick (b. 1979, Lurgan, N.Ireland) is an artist, educator and writer who makes solo and collaborative artworks, workshops and events that explore LGBTQIA and queer feminist activisms, cultures, histories and practices in moving image, performance and text. McStravick has exhibited in the UK and overseas including collaborative exhibitions and events at Generator, Dundee, CCA Glasgow, CCA Derry-Londonderry, Enclave, London and The Northern Quarter, Newcastle with collaborators including Laura Aldridge, Kathryn Elkin, Simone Hutchinson, Alexander Kennedy, Cara Tolmie, and Patrick Staff. He has appeared on panels and given presentations on Stuart Marshall, AIDS activism and broader cultural activisms at BFI Flare, Birkbeck, Concordia, Glasgow International and Chelsea College of Art, where he guest lectures. Mc Stravick studied at Glasgow School of Art and CRMEP Kingston, has served on the committee of Transmission Gallery, was selected as a LUX Associate Artist in 2011.
Raju Rage is proactive about using art, education and activism to forge creative survival. Based in London and working beyond, they explore the spaces and relationships between dis/connected bodies, theory and practice, text and the body and aesthetics and the political substance. Their current interests are around value, care and resistance. They are a member of Collective Creativity arts collective, A People's Art Collective and a creative educator with an interest in radical pedagogy. Raju has a theirstory in activism, self and collective organised queer/transgender/people of colour movements and creative projects from which their politics and works draw on and form.
The Right Lube is Maz Murray and Hava Carvajal, a trans couple who write about art, culture, trans feels, gender, queerness, assimilation, class and race. They focus on the different shiny ways that power tries to hide a violent system that is out to kill them and most everybody else. Before COVID they ran a Trans Hangout every two weeks in Bethnal Green, they now moderate an online trans Discord. They feel that being messy is an effective tactic to disrupt the pressures of neoliberal assimilation, but they also want to make money so they can afford their hormones. They are currently living in Basildon, Essex.
Virgil B/G Taylor is an american faggot based in Beacon or London or Bremen or Berlin. He makes fag tips, an online speculative zine. He is one half of sssssssssSsss, a study-friendship with Ashkan Sepahvand and a member of What Would An HIV Doula Do?, a collective of artists, writers, caretakers, activists and more gathered in response to the ongoing HIV/AIDS pandemic. His work explores histories of care and crisis, magic and toxicity. In addition to his art practice, which has been exhibited and performed in the US and Europe, he is a member of the editorial collective of PINKO Magazine, a magazine of gay communism. He was a 2017-18 Queer|Art|Mentorship fellow in Fine Art during which he was mentored by Carrie Yamaoka, a member of Fierce Pussy. He has a masters degree in Public Histories from Birkbeck College, University of London and is a Meisterschüler under the supervision of Natascha Sadr Haghighian at the Hochschule für Künste, Bremen.
Conal McStravick, Mosaic Pride Inside, film still, 2020
Fredde Lanka, Events banner for Ma Bra?, 2020
Raju Rage, A Pyramid Revealed By A Sandstorm, 2017
¶ Study Object Room organised by Virgil B/G Taylor, graphic, 2020
Ain Bailey and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, Remember to Exhale, 2020
Jamie Beard, Desperate Living graphic identity, Trans 20:20s identity, 2020