Launch: Eulogy for the Dyke Bar

Celebrate the program launch of Eulogy for the Dyke Bar, an installation and participatory project by American artist Macon Reed at the National Art School café.

Join us on opening night for an evening of music and dance to celebrate dyke culture, featuring a performance from Sydney-based hip-hop/R&B artist and beatboxer BVT, and a set from Afro-Caribbean crip DJ Aquenta, founder of CRIP RAVE THEORY which draws on disabled knowledge to create intersectionally-accessible rave spaces.

BVT is a Sydney-based hip hop/R&B artist, beatboxer, producer, actor and voice over artist. As a queer Person of Colour, BVT’s mission is to bridge the gap between the LGBTQI+ community and mainstream hip hop, whilst decolonising and reclaiming space, and bearing the culture as a future ancestor. 

Aquenta is an Afro-Caribbean crip DJ living and playing on the unceded lands of the Eora Nation. She always draws on her roots when crafting her sets, and then spices things up by adding her other favourite flavours. Expect dancehall, grime, global club, ballroom, amapiano and everything in between. As well as being a DJ, Aquenta is an interdisciplinary artist, solicitor and curator/community organiser. She is the founder of CRIP RAVE THEORY; a club night which draws on disabled knowledge to create more intersectionally-accessible rave spaces. For Aquenta, DJing is both playful and political: space-making through occupation and sonic curation, aimed at expanding community and club culture.

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Presented by UNSW Galleries, the National Art School and Sydney WorldPride, Eulogy for the Dyke Bar is a sculptural environment and memorial to bygone dyke bars—an increasingly rare component of the queer cultural landscape. The project offers an opportunity to think about the legacy of these spaces, why they are closing at a disproportionate rate, and what kinds of queer spaces we want to create moving forward. The installation incorporates a café and operating bar, and functions as an active community space for performances, cruising, socialising, and contemplating the future of queer spaces.

This project reclaims the term ‘dyke’ in its most expansive sense, and recognises that gender and identities are complex and fluid. Anyone who identifies with, or feels an allyship with, the dyke part of the queer spectrum is welcome and valued at the dyke bar.

 

 

 

Images: Program Launch for 'Eulogy for the Dyke Bar' at the National Art School Café, 2023. Photography: Cassandra Hannagan.

Tile and Banner Image: Macon Reed, Eulogy for the Dyke Bar 2016. Image courtesy: the artist