LESBIAN AND GAY BODIES IN QUEER SPACES

In 2001 I was asked to step out of my comfort zone as an academic to co-curate and research an exhibition about lesbian and gay lives at a regional museum in western Sydney. The exhibition drew on the experiences, geo-cultural images and voices of individual and community members, lives that usually remain invisible to those who live where the pink dollar is actively sought, and where it’s chic and relatively safe to be ‘gay’. As an academic it opened up opportunities to develop new ways of communicating information and stories in a non-traditional form, one which lent itself to working across several communities and disciplines. The result was a coming together of various communities – lesbian, gay and straight – into unusual but generally positive relationships that instilled many people with a sense of pride and well-being.