Hard forms, soft lives, 2018, install view. Photo: Alex Davies

Hard forms, soft lives, 2018, install view. Photo: Alex Davies

CONJURE, 2018, powder-coated steel, sand, glass, 210 x 156 x 40 cm. Photo: Jacquie Manning

CONJURE, 2018, powder-coated steel, sand, glass, 210 x 156 x 40 cm. Photo: Jacquie Manning

CONJURE (detail), 2018, powder-coated steel, sand, glass, 210 x 156 x 40 cm. Photo: Jacquie Manning

CONJURE (detail), 2018, powder-coated steel, sand, glass, 210 x 156 x 40 cm. Photo: Jacquie Manning

CONJURE (detail), 2018, powder-coated steel, sand, glass, 210 x 156 x 40 cm. Photo: Jacquie Manning

CONJURE (detail), 2018, powder-coated steel, sand, glass, 210 x 156 x 40 cm. Photo: Jacquie Manning

RE-RE-RE-, 2018, powder-coated steel, dimensions variable. Photo: Alex Davies

RE-RE-RE-, 2018, powder-coated steel, dimensions variable. Photo: Alex Davies

RE-RE-RE-, 2018, powder-coated steel, dimensions variable. Photo: Alex Davies

RE-RE-RE-, 2018, powder-coated steel, dimensions variable. Photo: Alex Davies

RE-RE-RE- (detail), 2018, powder-coated steel, dimensions variable. Photo: Jacquie Manning

RE-RE-RE- (detail), 2018, powder-coated steel, dimensions variable. Photo: Jacquie Manning

Stars above/concrete below, 2018, text by Spence Messih. Photo: Jacquie Manning

Stars above/concrete below, 2018, text by Spence Messih. Photo: Jacquie Manning

CONFECT, 2018, powder-coated steel, sand, glass, 200 x 74 x 44 cm. Photo: Alex Davies

CONFECT, 2018, powder-coated steel, sand, glass, 200 x 74 x 44 cm. Photo: Alex Davies

CONFECT (detail), 2018, powder-coated steel, sand, glass, 200 x 74 x 44 cm. Photo: Alex Davies

CONFECT (detail), 2018, powder-coated steel, sand, glass, 200 x 74 x 44 cm. Photo: Alex Davies

CONFECT (detail), 2018, powder-coated steel, sand, glass, 200 x 74 x 44 cm. Photo: Alex Davies

CONFECT (detail), 2018, powder-coated steel, sand, glass, 200 x 74 x 44 cm. Photo: Alex Davies

Primavera 2018: Young Australian Artists
9 November 2018 — 3 February 2019
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, NSW, AU
Curated by Megan Robson

View catalogue essay by Talia Linz

View exhibition text Stars above/concrete below by Spence Messih

Hard forms, soft lives question what happens when language, material and form appear abstracted, coded, hard to discern and in flux, and the ways this complicates the process of legibility. The three steel sculptures contain abstracted text welded into their structures—CONJURE, RE-RE-RE- and CONFECT. The work was developed in response to engaging with the archives, diaries and legacy of Lou Sullivan at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Historical Society in San Francisco. Sullivan was an activist, author and a pioneer of the grassroots FTM movement who was instrumental in helping trans people access peer-support and medical services outside of the gender clinics that were popping up across the US in the 1980s. 

In 2020 Vincent Silk and I wrote a reflection on We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan’, edited by Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma (2019) for Sydney Review of Books. Read it here.