Danish Quapoor, live to see my children's children (methusela), 2023, Acrylic, paint pen and hand-coiled and stitched baling twine on vinyl toddlerpillar, 46 x 13 x 22.5cm. Photograph: Amanda Galea. Courtesy of the artist

Gallery 4

redux

Danish Quapoor

room sheet

This exhibition revisits selected works from Danish Quapoor’s recent good grief series, recontextualising them amongst related works. Quapoor’s trademark illustrative paintings on stretched paper feature alongside wall drawings and sculptures. Collectively, the works allude to diverse concepts including shifting personal identities, familial relationships, corporeality, grief, memorialisation, frustration, allergies, expectations, gender roles and sexuality.

Most of the works were initially inspired by grief and memory–the grief ignited by the artist’s father’s unexpected death in 2020, and the memories reignited in the wake of that loss. For Quapoor, this was also intertwined with varied experiences of coming out to his immediate family members as bisexual. Quapoor has creatively defragmented and processed those traumas, acknowledging that while personal, they unfortunately don’t exist in isolation, particularly in heteronormative regional Australia. While these themes and tensions permeate the exhibition, Quapoor also tempers, abstracts and obfuscates the personal to embed life-affirming levity and humour within.

Developed in partnership with Metro Arts and Firstdraft.