Hello friends,
We hope you all enjoyed yourselves at Midsumma Carnival on Sunday. A great weekend to kick off Midsumma Festival 2019. Events are selling out, so get your tickets ASAP so you don’t miss out.
Check out our Midsumma Facebook Page to see a selection of photos from the day.
Also, read on to find out what’s on at Midsumma Festival this week and don’t forget to check in with us at the Midsumma Festival Bar at The Coopers Malthouse for a refreshment or a bite to eat before or after your events.
Happy Midsumma!
Karen Bryant
Chief Executive
Midsumma Carnival 2019 – What A Blast!
What a day! The annual Midsumma Carnival on Sunday made a fantastic start to the festival season, with over 105,000 people attending the festivities at the beautiful Alexandra Gardens, in the heart of Melbourne. Midsumma Carnival is one of the biggest days of the year and we’d like to thank you all for coming along and uniting the LGBTQIA+ community for a fun, diverse, eventful and pride-filled day. We have a few highlights for you below but keep an eye out on our social media channels for more fantastic photos to come. If you want to share your pics with us, please send them through to content@midsumma.org.au
Images by Rod Cebellos and Tanya McCulloch
Winners of the 2019 Midsumma and Australia Post Art Prize Announced
Photography by Eugene Howard
Since its inauguration in 2016 the Midsumma and Australia Post Art Prize has quickly established itself as an important award in the ecology of the arts. With finalists selected from across the country, the non-acquisitive annual award is a survey of outstanding queer artists working across mediums reflecting their potent personal and political perspectives on the world.
Congratulations to all of the finalists and thank you to all of our judges. The 13 finalists are exhibited at No Vacancy Gallery from 22 January to 3 February as part of Midsumma Festival. Throughout the exhibition visitors to the No Vacancy Gallery can vote for the $1000 People’s Choice Award.
We are so proud to announce the 2019 Midsumma and Australia Post Art Prize Winners:
Major Award Winner ($5000): Dexter Rosengrave
Dexter Rosengrave is a queer transgender emerging artist based in Hobart, Tasmania. Their work currently exists at the intersection of endurance performance, multimedia, gender, body and identity. Rosengrave investigates the materiality of objects and how they transform alongside the body while their performances are self-inflicted agitations that promote corporeal and emotional awareness. Their lived experience of being queer and transgender has recently shifted to the forefront of their practice and they are developing a significant interest in community-focused art projects which blend archival documents and personal stories with queer history. Rosengrave completed their Bachelor of Fine Arts with first class Honours in 2018 at the University of Tasmania. They have had several solo exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions and exhibited as part of Dark Mofo Festival in 2018. They have performed for and worked alongside Mike Parr and Marina Abramović and they were recently awarded the 2019 funded Rosamond McCulloch Residency in Paris as well as an ANZ and Sydney Mardi Gras Community Grant.
Star Observer Award ($1000): Kate Just
Kate Just is an established artist who works with sculpture, installation, neon, textiles and photography to produce contemporary art works that promote queer and feminist representations of the body and experience. Specific to Just’s practice is the use of knitting as an engaging sculptural medium and an unwitting political tool. In addition to her highly crafted solo artworks, Just often works collaboratively within the community to create large scale, public projects that tackle significant social issues including sexual harassment and violence against women. Kate Just holds a PhD in Sculpture from Monash University, a Master of Arts from RMIT University, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Victorian College of the Arts.
Just has exhibited across Australia in over one hundred group and solo exhibitions including at NGV, NGA, ACCA, Artspace, the Melbourne Art Fair, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Craft Victoria, Gertrude Contemporary, CCP, and PICA. Internationally she has exhibited her work at AIR Gallery in New York, at the ICA in Richmond Virginia, the Rijswijk Museum in the Netherlands, Kunsthalle Krems in Austria, Sanskriti Gallery in New Delhi and Youkobo Artspace in Tokyo.
Bundoora Homestead Art Award (includes an artist fee, residency opportunity and public outcome): Sean Miles
Sean Miles (Ngati Raukawa) is a cute queer trickster artist living as an uninvited guest in unceded Kulin nation territory. Their multi-disciplinary art practice spans across performance, photography, video, installation and sculpture.
What’s On This Week At Midsumma Festival?
There is a lot happening this week at Midsumma Festival, so make sure you check our “What’s on this week” page on our website. Don’t be late for this very important date – the Mad Hatter Tea Party, a free event for LGBTQIA+ 12-25 years of age who want to meet like-minded friends. Also tonight is the PINK, a visual cornucopia of queer art at the Tacit Galleries in Collingwood. Or you can enter the raucous, radical and wildly funny world of Queerstories, and enjoy an unexpected tale or two from a diverse line up of stars and strangers, reflections on lives well lived and battles fought. Grab your lashes and get up close and personal with local drag legends for Get Ready! With Ruby Slippers and Friends (pictured). Ruby’s guest tonight will be Minnie Taur. And for Thursday we have festival favourite Shania Choir back again with a brand new show Shania Choir: Pub Choir for one night only.
Image: Chayla Taylor
NAB – Find Your Pride
More Out and Proud at the NAB tent at Midsumma Carnival. Everyone who hit the red carpet had a strut or a boogie. NAB have always taken pride in celebrating people for who they are. So whether you identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, straight or you’ve decided to throw labels out the window all together, there’s never been a better time to just be yourself. NAB have been proud partners of Midsumma Festival since 2013 and we are so glad they keep coming back! Find Your Pride >>
Grotesque and un-PC, TMB is truly subversive
Britney Spears, Savage Garden, Las Vegas, Morphine, and a brand new play; the perfect backdrop for a summertime party in St Kilda. Long term boyfriends, Adam and Steve, are die-hard Britney Spears fans and Savage Garden doppelgängers. Together they embark upon a pilgrimage along the holy sites of Britney’s 2007 breakdown. However, when their meet-and-greet tickets for Britney’s concert residency in Las Vegas are inexplicably cancelled, everything begins to fall apart.
Truly Madly Britney is part of a spectacular queer party season at Theatre Works, located in the heart of St. Kilda. A new work by Alberto Di Troia, Truly Madly Britney is new Australian writing that is loud, queer, hilarious, considered and surprising. Event details >>
Telstra Citizen Reporters
The Telstra Citizen Reporters are back! Five Telstra employees, Adam Sparnon, Anna McKenzie, Helen Farrell, Janay Richardson and Jarrod Cardy, are sharing their Midsumma Festival experiences on social media throughout the 2019 Midsumma Festival. Be sure not to miss the action by following the hashtag #TelstraReporter and #midsumma. Details here >>
What’s On At Midsumma Festival Bar This Week?
This week at the Midsumma Festival Bar at The Coopers Malthouse we have a fabulous line-up of free events to keep you entertained before or after your Midsumma event. We also have a special signature drink, the LGBTQIA+ Sangria, to keep you refreshed, and why not grab a bite to eat as well!
Wednesday 23 January | 6 – 7pm | Dancing Qweens: Let’s Get Critical – A Queer Histories Panel
Thursday 24 January | 6 – 9pm | Queer Zinefest
Saturday 26 January | 4 – 5pm | Adelaide Fringe Info Session at Midsumma Festival
25% off purchases of ZIWI, Kong beds or DGS products
The iconic Midsumma Dog Show at Midsumma Carnival 2019 was once again a huge hit! We loved every pooch and their outfits, they stole the show as they walked the stage. Keep an eye on our social media channels to see more fantastic pics. We want to take this time to thank our 2019 Dog Show sponsors and partners. The Dog Show is proudly sponsored by RACV Pet Insurance and supported by Ziwipeak air-dried, free-range pet food, We Are Family – Unusual Pet Portraits and Guide Dogs Victoria.
Our friends at Kiwipeak have an exclusive offer for our eNews readers for 25% off your purchase of ZIWI, Kong beds or DGS products, one time only per customer, valid till Monday 3 Feb. Visit the BowHouse website and use the code ‘MIDSUMMA2019‘ at the checkout to receive your discount. Everyone who orders will also receive free samples of air-dried ZIWI for either dog or cat with their order.
Image by Rod Cebellos
