16 February to 31 May 2020 - Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings - Focal Point Gallery

Hannah Quinlan
and Rosie Hastings

16 February
to 31 May 2020

Now You See Me
Rosanna Mclaughlin

If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard the phrase “queer community”
casually dropped into conversation, I’d have enough money by now to build
a queer commune. The truth is, I can’t recall a time when the concept of
community has been placed in so much doubt. Following the 2008 financial
crisis, rising living costs in the UK have increasingly pushed people to the
edges of urban zones making it harder to come together. The gig economy
is busy destroying the division between work time and free time, and
unchecked gentrification has ensured small businesses continue to drop like
flies. This shit-storm of neoliberalism and austerity has hit the LGBTQ+ scene
hard. In the space of a decade 58 percent of venues in London closed, a
trend repeated in towns and cities elsewhere. Physically dispersed, out of
pocket, with fewer places to go (other than the Zombieville of social
media….) and that’s before we even get to the frictions between the groups
who shelter uneasily under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. Suffice it to say: phew.

Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings’ exhibition ‘In My Room’ takes a
deep-dive into the changes facing LGBTQ+ cultures in the UK, examining the
riptides and eddies in which they are immersed. Installed in the window of
Focal Point Gallery are the drawings Jester #4 and #7 (both 2020), two
rubbings depicting the mischievous figure in a bell-lined suit. The artists took
the impressions from a mural on the wall of Bar Jester, a gay club in
Birmingham that shut in November 2019. To make the works they deployed
an ancient technique revived among history enthusiasts in the modern era for
recording the facades of tombstones.

No doubt about it – Jester is an ominous mascot for a species of culture in
decline. Like much of Quinlan and Hastings’ work, I like to think of it as a
form of affective archeology: a study of the behaviours, politics, and
artefacts of a fading force, a reckoning of what is left in its wake, and a
questioning of where we go from here.

For while we rightly mourn a way of life facing Armageddon there is no
denying its ambivalent legacy. Put simply, gay men have long dominated
LGBTQ+ visibility. For every ten gay bars open during the nightlife industry’s
boom years, you’d be lucky to find a single lesbian venue, a figure
considerably lower for trans spaces. And, as the artists’ work to date has
shown, many of the bars and clubs in the cross-hairs of austerity have a
tendency to fetishise white, gender-conforming, cis masculinity. Their 2015-16
project UK Gay Bar Directory, an archive of the interiors of over 100
LGBTQ+ spaces - an excerpt of which is on Big Screen Southend - showed a

fashion for adorning walls with army uniforms, union jack flags and
photographs of heroically muscular torsos. Whether you view this as an
uncritical celebration of white patriarchy, or a queering of institutions that
have historically excluded and punished homosexuals, one thing is for
certain: the gay bar of old has gone down like a lead balloon among
proponents of the intersectional, anti-normative, contemporary iteration of
queerness.

Head spinning yet? I don’t blame you. Perhaps like me you have found
yourself asking why there is a burden of expectation placed upon gay
venues to please anyone but – well, gay men. After all, you wouldn’t show
up at the greengrocers and demand to be served bread. The problem is,
when it comes to LGBTQ+ representation our stories are often conflated.
And, when one letter of the queer alphabet becomes culturally dominant, it
is bound to cause resentments. (Among the dozens of news articles decrying
the decline in the UK’s LGBTQ+ nightlife, for example, almost all the venues
discussed were, you guessed it, gay.) At best, LGBTQ+ people share a
solidarity born from being outsiders in a heteronormative world. In reality the
difference in our legal and cultural histories, and our everyday experiences
of the world, are often stark—and what counts as desirable or emancipating
for some may echo the oppression of others.

Take cruising – one of the subjects of Quinlan and Hastings’ film In My Room
(2020), shot in Bar Jester after its closure as well as in woodlands and urban
areas at night. Working with the choreographer Les Child, former ‘house
mother’ on the voguing scene in the 1980s, the artists produced a ballad of
white homo-sociality expressed through dance. In one poignant scene,
filmed between Shoeburyness Fort and a housing development on the site of
a former army base, a group of men perform a weary, libidinous line dance.
A humorous, almost-tender vignette of camaraderie, it is also a reminder of
who feels able to express and conduct their sexuality in public.

With a history stretching back to at least the 17th century in the UK, cruising
has long been a necessary release valve in an oppressive climate, a way of
circumventing compulsory heterosexuality - which for a great swathe of time
the UK insisted men abide by, upon pain of death. In recent years it has also
been theorised as an activity with radical potential. In many ways it is: a
form of sexual derivé, a rewriting of the city, a reimagining of the laws of
interaction, and a middle finger to bigoted, buttoned-up rules. “In cruising –
at least in ideal cruising”, wrote the queer theorist Leo Bersani in his essay
Sociability and Cruising (2010), “we leave our selves behind.”

Yet who is capable of leaving themselves behind is another question entirely.

Until the UK Married Women’s Property Acts were passed in the late 19th
century, a woman’s rights were subsumed by her husband, ensuring she was
politically disenfranchised and without control over finance or property
(never mind exacting influence over the uses of public space). Add this to the
fact than one in five women in the UK have been sexually assaulted, and
two in five trans people and three in ten non-binary people have been the
victims of hate crime, and you have a pretty compelling argument for why
cruising is an activity almost exclusively performed by cis men. They are the
demographic who have historically dominated the streets; who have not, at
least to the same extent, had a fear of physical danger and sexual assault
inscribed into the bones of their collective identity.

Quinlan and Hastings’ focus on the politics of gay culture may seem unusual
– particularly given the paucity of lesbian representation. This focus,
however, is precisely the point. The double-pronged assault of homophobia
and misogyny has made lesbian visibility both scarce and anxiety-inducing.
When we are visible, more often than not we are exploited for the pleasure
and profit of others— by the heterosexual porn industry and its global market
for sapphic-themed content, or by the music industry, where lesbian-lite
videos have spiced up the brands of straight pop stars from Madonna to
Selena Gomez. Despite the recent cultural cache attached to queerness, the
museum and gallery sector has also largely ignored our history, with the
exception of a handful of wealthy modernists. In the absence of accessible
and meaningful representation, queer women are often left to learn what
queer otherness looks like through the lens of male homosexuality. In this
way, gay culture has become a part of the lesbian experience – even as it
has never exactly offered us a home.

The fresco Republic (2020), based upon Andrea Mantegna’s drawing of
Christ being whipped in the street, The Flagellation, with the Pavement (ca.
1475–80) considers the figure of the woman as she enters the public forum;
a psychologically complex terrain. In contrast to Mantegna’s drawing, in
which everyone is male, Republic is populated by women apparently in
states of anger or distress. Nobody is making eye contact. A melodramatic
tableau of fractious individuals, the work could be read as a satire of
infighting over what the term ‘lesbian’ means — and what might count as its
collective politics. In recent years, and to the horror of many, a small number
of prominent lesbians have used public platforms to spread transphobic
messages about who counts as a woman. Political divisions have arisen
between puritanical cliques who are anti-porn and anti-sex work, and those
who believe in legal reforms to protect sex-workers’ rights. Added to which is
a trend among younger queers to dismiss lesbianism as uncool and obsolete
in the age of gender fluidity, recycling old-fashioned homophobia in the

name of emancipatory politics.

On display in glass cabinets in the reception area are three graphite
drawings – also partially based on works by Mantegna. The drawings
depict the exteriors of gay venues, all of which are either closed already or
scheduled for closure before 2021 – a sex club named Boltz, Bar Jester,
and Core Club. Quinlan and Hastings have removed the signage, and in
front of the blank facades small groups of women congregate. The
atmosphere is steeped in tension and uncertainty. It is hard to tell if they are
play fighting, on the cusp of making out, or are about to start a brawl.

In his essay Gay Betrayals (2010), Bersani wrote of a tendency to form our
identities through conflict. “It’s always my difference against your difference”
as he put it, words that ring particularly true today. The desire to belong is
increasingly being weaponised by the resurgent right wing, who encourage
us to conceive of ourselves as mini-nation states with guarded borders and
sworn enemies. In contrast to such sabre-rattling tendencies, ‘In My Room’
asks us to look at the bruises, inspect the fractures, and spend time thinking
and feeling our way through the causes of the ailments that plague us. In the
process, the exhibition raises questions with repercussions for the future of
LGBTQ+ communities and beyond. How to maintain our differences without
excluding others? How to open ourselves up without losing our voices, our
definition? How to be visible without being exploited? How to lay claim to
public space, and occupy the streets? And how, in the face of a political
economy that profits from stoking resentments, and selling off our high streets
to the highest bidders, do we ensure nobody is consigned to the closet or
left behind in their room?

List of works

Gallery 1

In My Room, 2020, HD Video,17 minutes 43 seconds

Courtesy the artists, Arcadia Missa and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi

Gallery 2

Republic, 2020, Fresco

Courtesy the artists and Arcadia Missa

Gallery 3 (Window Gallery)

Jester #4, 2019, Graphite on paper

Jester #7, 2019, Soft pastel on paper

Courtesy the artists and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi

Gallery Cabinet (left to right)

Bar Jester, 2020, Graphite on paper

Core, 2020, Graphite on paper

Boltz, 2020, Graphite on paper

Courtesy the artists and Arcadia Missa

Commissioned by Focal Point Gallery, ‘In My Room’ is presented in
partnership with Mostyn Gallery, Wales, and Humber Street Gallery,
Hull. Funded by Arts Council National Lottery Projects Grant.

Associated Programme

‘In My Room’ Exhibition Tour with Katharine Stout
Thursday 27 February, 5.00pm to 6.00pm

Please join Katharine Stout, Director of Focal Point Gallery for a guided
tour of the works in the exhibition ‘In My Room’. Katharine will explore the
artists’ enquiry into the politics, histories and aesthetics of queer spaces and
culture. This is part of Southend’s #LastThursdayLates programme. This event
is free and all are welcome.

Free Family Workshops ‘Room Rubbings’ with Hannah Quinlan, Rosie
Hastings and Gaby Sahhar
Saturday 21 March, 11.00am to 3.00pm

Taking inspiration from the stone relief rubbings in ‘In My Room’, explore the
surfaces in and around the gallery along with different textured objects.
Guided by artists Hannah Quinlan, Rosie Hastings and Gaby Sahhar, you
can discover new skills to create large scale intergenerational collaborative
artworks. A drop-in workshops for all ages.

‘In My Room’ Exhibition Tour with Rosanna Mclaughlin
Saturday 18 April, 3.00pm to 4.00pm

Please join writer and editor Rosanna Mclaughlin for a guided gallery tour
of the exhibition ‘In My Room’. Her essays and art criticism have featured in
Frieze, ArtReview, and BOMB, among other places. Her book Double-
Tracking, a collection of satirical essays and short fiction on middle-class
duplicities, was published by Carcanet Press in 2019. She is an editor at The
White Review.

The Agency of Visible Women Workshops hosted by Natasha Carter
Thursday 30 April and Saturday 2 May, 4.00pm to 6.00pm

Taking inspiration from Rosie and Hannah’s archiving of queer history through
the use of classical art techniques, Natasha Carter will host two workshops
aimed at LGBTQIA* people of 16 and above. The first session will consider
the permanent ways in which working class youth indelibly declare their
existence in rebellious and irreverent ways through tagging on walls,
scratching into paint and imprinting themselves in fresh concrete. The second
session will take the form of a practical workshop, in which participants will
create a unique lino tile ‘tag’ to form part of a collective mural. This mural will
then itself act as a permanent archive of the experiences of queer young
people in Southend.

‘In My Room’ Exhibition Tour with Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings
Sunday 31 May, 2.00pm to 3.00pm

Join artists Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings for a gallery tour on the last
day of their exhibition, ‘In My Room’, followed by a short Q&A.

To book any of these events, please visit www.fpg.org.uk/events, or ask at the
front desk.

‘In My Room’ Film Credits

Rosie Taylor is the Director of Photography, with Colourist, Philipp Morozov.
The soundtrack for the film is made by Owen Pratt. In making the film, the
artists have worked with choreographer Les Child, singer Jesse Hultberg and
dancers: Ted Rodgers, Matthew Hawkins, Paul Liburd, Christopher Sparkey,
Gary O’Brien and Lucille Marshall.

Focal Point Gallery, Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings would like to
thank:

Shaun C Badham, Jackson Bateman, Isabella Bortolozzi, Natasha Carter,
Paul Eastwood, Rozsa Farkas, Morag Keil, Fleur Kelly, Josh Langhan, Leigh-
on-Sea Brewery, Rosanna Mclaughlin, Fraser Muggeridge studio, Gaby
Sahhar and Dave Watkins.

About Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings:

Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings (both born 1991, Newcastle & London)
live and work in London. They have participated in group shows including the
recent ‘Cruising Pavilion: Architecture, Gay Sex and Cruising Culture’,
ArkDes, Stockholm; ‘Kiss My Genders’, Hayward Gallery, London;
‘Breathless’, Ca Pesaro, Venice; and ‘Queer Spaces: London, 1980s –
Today’, Whitechapel Gallery, London (all 2019). Solo presentations include
‘Something for The Boys’, Two Queens, Leicester and ‘Gaby’, Queer
Thoughts, NYC ( both 2018). Recent performances took place for Image
Behaviour, ICA, London; Art Night, London; Move Festival, Pompidou Centre,
Paris; and Kiss My Gender Live, Southbank Centre, London (all 2019).

About Focal Point Gallery:

Focal Point Gallery supports the production and presentation of new and
recent contemporary art that challenges us to think and feel differently about
locality, our sense of self and the importance of communities. Our wide-
ranging and pioneering artistic programme is relevant to local and national
audiences alike, through exploring current concerns that also resonate
internationally. Based in Southend-on-Sea on the Thames Estuary, FPG’s
activities take place in locations across the region with our reach extended by
working collaboratively with like-minded partners.

As a key focus of our output, Focal Point Gallery’s learning programme aims
to engage people of all ages in current debates around contemporary art,
and looks to extend and develop new audiences. We consider the
philosophies and working methods of the artists in our exhibitions programme
as the starting point for inspiration, aspiration and discussion in the community.
On this basis, the gallery seeks to proactively engage with a wide range of
local community groups, schools, young people and children.

Focal Point Gallery also curates and commissions an on-going programme of
artist moving image, screened daily on Big Screen Southend; a permanent
outdoor video facility located adjacent to our main gallery space in Elmer
Square.

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Focal Point Gallery is a not-for-profit organisation, which relies on support from
grant-giving bodies, trusts, businesses and individuals for its exhibition,
learning and public programmes. All donations directly support these
programmes and our ambition to support great art across Essex.

www.fpg.org.uk