by Felicity Bean.

Last week the Art Gallery of Western Australia held their Pride-themed AGWA Ball. Advertised as its ‘first Met Gala-style ball’[1], the PrideFEST collaboration was billed as an evening of ‘music, dance, cabaret, and drag-opera’.  AGWA’s social media exclaimed, ‘What the world needs now, more than ever is UNITY.’ It’s a touching premise. Yet, no matter how well intentioned any corporate pride event is, or how much consultation or planning takes place, it is difficult to shake the feeling of inauthenticity. This gripe goes beyond AGWA. In the past (and present), queer communities have gathered and mobilised much like unions—a groundswell of individuals collectively organising events, demonstrations, parties, and networks of support for the betterment of their community. The unshakeable feeling of inauthenticity of such corporate pride events is shared with the kind of HR culture that utilises ‘team building exercises’ as a means of developing supervised camaraderie (and dissuading workers from union organising)—the idea being that you could have your cake and eat it too.
        Upon entry, a rainbow flag carpet (or sizeable vinyl) enticingly guided entrants into the main foyer of the gallery where guests were greeted with drag queens and dancers from Connections nightclub alongside drinks and canapés. Over the munching of nibbles and slurping of booze, the House of Reign’s ballroom performers fought for attention—their exceptional performance drowned out by the odd arrangement of the crowd, bar, and stage. But why the critique! It’s just a party, I hear you say! A bit of fun! Perhaps so. But to play the contrarian, the ball could also be considered a strange charcuterie board of “queer” and “youth culture” spectacles, transplanted from their usual locales, and appropriated into the foyer for the delight and curiosity of a mostly middle-aged affluent crowd looking to get a little rowdy, a tad raunchy. Hetero couples staggered about the foyer, bevvy in hand—her in glitzy sequins and a mid-century hair piece, him wearing a touch of her mascara to “glam” up his suit and RM combo. It’s the kind of look one could imagine AI generating to the prompt “how to look a little gay as a straight couple”, a pinkwashing of guests one might uncharitably imagine for a corporate pride ball.
        After some meandering speeches and a bit of Nessun dorma performed by Le Gateau Chocolat, the crowd was given one of two options: to remain on the ground floor and partake in “snatch your blush” (with some free glitzy makeup! As all heterosexual people know there is nothing gayer than applying glittery makeup), or up to the third floor for Zheng Bo’s work, Dance Grass Dance Tree. Immediately, I took the elevator. The performance begins. Atop a bed of mulch and native plants and grass trees, two naked women slowly manoeuvre around the flora—shifting from sombre walking motions to enclosed, restful positions, or stretching out in exaltation. The performance itself was captivating and poetic. It also seemed to have very little to do with anything about the “queer” experience. It was, rather, a pairing of performance and ball based on happenstance and coincidence rather than coherence or cohesion. Drowning out the sobering ambient composition that accompanied the performance were the DJs and juiced-up jubilance of the partygoers below. It is a performance worth seeing (more a stage than exhibition—so, I would recommend only attending during the allotted performance times), but certainly a thematically tenuous addition to the eve.
        Returning to the idea of the authentic and inauthentic queer event, I cannot help but be reminded of the first time I saw House of Reign perform. In the main hall of the Rechabite a New York style runway was set up for the House’s first major ballroom battle. Performers competed in the classic categories: voguing, runway, sex siren, realness, old way, etc., as the unfiltered MC clicked their fingers and exclaimed contestants ought to “pop that cunt”. The audience was spellbound. The buzz of an audience caught in total undivided captivation by a performance is a sensation difficult to articulate—easily detected yet seemingly ineffable. Witnessing the struggle that some of the same performers had in engaging the attention of AGWA’s audience had little to do with their performance—but was, rather, a reflection on the mismatched interests of those average attendees and the organisers.
        Overall, reviewing parties is best left to the experts—the New Journalist in-crowd of rave philosophy experts, whose druggy confessionals and theorising inevitably read like taxing methods for justifying one’s own hangxiety and ill-decisions.

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Artwork credit: Taring Padi, Kendeng Lestari, Nyawiji Kanggo Ibu Bumi (Kendeng Lestari, Being One with Mother Earth), 2023, acrylic on canvas, 480 x 600 cm. Courtesy of Griffith University Art Museum. Photo: Louis Lim.