Perv Dykes: Queer Kinksters in Space
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When
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Address
156 FORBES ST DARLINGHURST NSW 2010
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Hours
6–8PM
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Phone
+61 2 8936 0888
BDSM has the potential to transform, awaken, and deeply queer our embodied experience. How do we find ways to our kinks without the crucial spaces required to learn, explore, see and be seen, and cruise for our companion flag?
Gala Vanting (mother of Hedon House, a kink space designed with queers at the front) appears in conversation with Mistress Tokyo (Dominatrix, Consent Consultant and convenor of queer community space ‘Peak Space’). Together they discuss the alchemy of queer-created spaces, their necessity as a crucible for queer explorations, and the power of bringing our wildest perversions to life.
Gala Vanting is an advocate, sex worker and writer living and working as a migrant settler on stolen land. Gala is also the founder of Hedon House, a queerly-conceived venue celebrating bodies, pleasure, rest and play. Gala strives to centre the right to pleasure, care and embodiment, particularly for the sex worker community. Gala works to create nuanced, compassionate, justice-driven dialogue about sexual culture, sex education, gender and power, and access to embodiment and wellbeing. Gala has worked in the public health sector, arts and media, education, advocacy, writing, and filmmaking.
Mistress Tokyo is a Dominatrix based in Sydney with her own world-class studio. She is queer and a cisgender woman, her pronouns are she/her/hers. As well as being a sex worker, she is a BDSM educator and performer. She is also a Consent Consultant with her own consent training model, ‘Mindful Consent’. She is currently an undergraduate student of Psychology and Counselling.
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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. 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: Perv Dykes: Queer Kinksters in Space for 'Eulogy for the Dyke Bar' at the National Art School Café, 2023. Photography: Cassandra Hannagan.