Artist in Residence, Liam Colgan will develop a new series of works exploring how bodies are encountered through social media and how screen mediation shapes understandings of queerness. Online spaces have become integral to disseminating knowledge of LGBT issues, and often function as windows through which to voyeuristically share in others lived experiences. For trans people in particular, online spaces like Instagram and YouTube are used to cultivating new visual languages around embodiment, desire and intimacy. These spaces act as archives, cataloguing the different forces that affect and motivate queer people in the world.

Taking from their own experience of exploring gender through Instagram, Colgan will be producing sculptural and performative works that unpack how image making online has informed their identity. Colgan is interested in the glamorous selfies, intimate nudes and perfectly staged photo-shoots that offer images of queer life as full of sensuality and empowerment. What does it mean to make these images? And how might one better represent the complexity of embodiment? Through object making and performance, Colgan hopes to consider the physical and emotional impacts of such contemporary image sharing online.

Liam Colgan is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Perth. Colgan’s work broadly investigates the fields of sexuality and queer theory in relation to art practice. Their work often deals with the normative social structures within everyday life and draws from their personal experience of queer identity. Their investigations predominantly take the form of video, performance and installation. Through these media, Colgan considers how individuals might challenge social power structures and navigate complex emotional and psychological states.

Since graduating in 2014, Colgan has exhibited in multiple group shows including Hatched National Graduate Show at PICA in Perth; Passing/Parades at Success Arts in Fremantle and Of All Others at First Draft in Sydney. More recently Colgan presented their first solo exhibition King Single/Expanded Queen at FELTSpace in Adelaide and produced a new performance work for Proximity Festival in late 2017.