A Beryl Cook painting depicting four well-rounded people, one man and three women, playing a game of billiards in a bar

Lauren J Joseph

Saturday Talks Series

Lauren J. Joseph presents a series of readings inspired by the queer iconography of Beryl Cook. Based on her own experiences of being brought up in Liverpool in the 90s, Lauren J. Joseph recounts a specific kind of kinship towards Cook's ubiquitous imagery, touching upon her various depictions of gay bars, sex workers, drag queens and outsiders, which Cook painted without any of the mockery or moral judgement that defined the era’s attitude towards queer people.

This event forms part of our Saturday Talks series, in which artists, curators and writers lead personal responses to Beryl Cook / Tom of Finland. These talks, readings and performances are an opportunity to explore specific aspects of the exhibition, from 'bad taste' to class tourism, masculinity and sexuality in the military, and London's lost queer spaces.

  1. Lauren J. Joseph is an artist and writer, who works across video, text, and live performance. She has written extensively on contemporary culture, art, performance, pornography, gender theory and social class, contributing in print and online to publications including The Observer, Granta, Tate Etc,  iD, The Independent, Sleek, The Guardian, Time Out, Attitude, Amuse, Siegessäule, Parterre de Rois, Charleston Press, and the ‘zines Birdsong, Fat Zine, House Party 21st Century Queer Artists Identify Themselves, and Not Here: An Anthology of Queer Loneliness. 

    Previous authored works include the novel At Certain Points We Touch (Bloomsbury, 2022), the experimental prose volume Everything Must Go (ITNA Press, 2014), and the plays, A Generous Lover and Boy in a Dress, which were published by Oberon in 2019. Lauren is currently at work editing a new novel.

  2. Beryl Cook, Bar Billiards, 1995. Image courtesy of the Beryl Cook Estate.

Suggested donation £5

Saturday 8 June 2024, 3–3.30 pm

Studio Voltaire
1A Nelsons Row
London SW4 7JR


Open Wednesday–Sunday, 10 am–5 pm.

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