Photopolymer etching
37.5 x 48.9 cm [14.8 x 19.3 inches]
Edition of 30, signed and numbered.
About the work
Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings have produced Lonely City, 2019, a photopolymer etching in an edition of 30, especially for Whitechapel Gallery to accompany the exhibition Queer Spaces: London, 1980's - Today, 2 April – 25 August 2019.
The photopolymer etching translates the softness of colour pastel, the medium in which the original drawing was created. Quinlan and Hastings choose to work in pastel as it feels to them like a looser and less uptight way of working, lending itself to the nightclub setting of the work.
The scene in Lonely City portrays a small and easily forgotten conflict on the dance floor between a sneering gay man and a group of friends. Inspired by the work of Denzil Forrester whose colourful club scenes from the 1980's are haunted by the presence of the police and potential violence. To Quinlan and Hastings, it is important to convey the energy of the dancefloor as being so powerful that the clubbers’ lust for life cannot be broken.
Drawing allows Quinlan and Hastings to probe, analyse and re-present the dynamics of the gay clubbing scene in an imaginary realm. Their drawings reveal worlds full of dreamlike uncertainty, populated by heroic characters on the cusp of love or violence. “It felt like we were digging into the collective queer unconscious, and reveling in the joys and anxieties that define everyday queer life.”
About the artists
Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings (b. 1991, Newcastle/ London) live and work in London. Their work centres on themes of queerness and resistance, specifically looking at the notion of the ‘gay bar’ spatially, aesthetically and politically. In works such as UK Gay Bar Directory, a moving image archive of gay bars in the UK, and their ongoing project, @Gaybar, which re-stages the historicised gay bar as a container for queer practice, they commemorate the fight for queer spaciality and consider the ever-growing threat of gentrification on the UK’s already scarce terrain of queer spaces.
Selected Exhibitions
Kiss My Genders, Hayward Gallery, London, UK, 2019; Commissioned performance, Art Night, London, UK, 2019; Something for the Boys, Two Queens, Leicester, UK, 2018; Screening Room, Arcadia Missa, London, UK, 2018; Gaby, Queer Thoughts, New York, US, 2018; The Cruising Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale, Venice, IT, 2018; We Lost Them At Midnight, Arcadia Missa, London, UK, 2017; Fuck Me On The Middle Walk, Truth and Consequences, Geneva, CH, 2017; Coming Out, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK, 2017; GENTRIFICATION, presented by Daata Editions and Zuecca Projects, 15th Venice Architecture Biennale, IT, 2016; Utopian Voices Here & Now, Somerset House, London, UK, 2016; Cruising Extinction, @Gaybar, Oslo 10, Basel, CH, 2015; If These Fossils Could Talk They Would Tell You Who Got Fucked and Who Didn’t, Room E10-27, Paris, FR, 2015; Tifkas, Arcadia Missa, London, UK, 2015.
Whitechapel Gallery editions are generously donated by the artists. All proceeds from the sale of these works directly support our exhibition and education programmes. As is traditional in editions publishing, prices will rise as an edition starts to sell out.
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