What Matters? Queer Poetry Slam

What Matters? Queer Poetry Slam

2020-02-17

LOCATION: Cell Block Theatre
DATE: Friday 28 February
TIME: Doors open at 6.30pm for 7pm start
TICKETS: $20/15

Discover Australia’s most subversive and boldly original queer poets at our raucous poetry competition. Our slammers tell us what matters as we heat up the historic Cell Block Theatre with words of protest, love, rage and power. With a special guest host and some guest performances throughout the Slam, we’ve got the night before Mardi Gras Parade completely covered.

Poets and guests announced closer to event date.

Add on to your poetry slam experience with our Moonlite pop-up bar, Print with Pride workshop and a curator’s tour of Mistfit: Collage and queer practice and i hate my dad.

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Artist line-up

Host: Kween G
Renowned for potent content, Kween G delivers dynamic style as an MC, performer and Hip Hop artist. She makes consciousness-raising music that excites, entertains, and enlightens her listeners. Her fighting spirit – for women’s rights and those in disadvantaged communities – courage and humility have earned her respect across the country. In strong demand as a MC, performer and host, Kween G is a community icon.

Special guest performer: Betty Grumble
Emma Maye Gibson (AKA Betty Grumble) is a Sydney-based performance artist. Largely through the avatar/war mask/love letter/totem critter of Betty Grumble she engages her body as a political and medicinal site of performative catharsis, often in a genre smash of ritual physical theatre, cabaret, performance art and multi-media. She is a proud ecosexual and believes in the shamanic/shawomanly power of live space. She has her Masters in Fine Arts/Arse and has presented work at Dark Mofo, Sydney Opera House, Glastonbury, Edinburgh Fringe, Perth & Adelaide Fringes, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI), Belvoir St Theatre, The Bearded Tit, Berlin Fringe, and beyond. She believes in the flesh riot and is currently engaged in developing a new work under the guidance of mentor Annie Sprinkle in her world-saving trilogy of performance ceremony.

Music act: KYVA
Crafting a delicate balance of alternative pop influenced by the likes of The Cure, Prince and Elliot Smith, KYVA embodies a union of worlds: drawing equally from spheres of Dark Wave and Soul to create something entirely new and sonically beautiful.

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Passionate about collections and the arts? Join us as a Digitisation Volunteer!

The National Art School Archive and Collection team is looking for enthusiastic Digitisation Volunteers to help bring our art collection to life! Your work will play a key role in making art and history more accessible—by photographing and recording our collections, enhancing our museum database, and digitising our extensive archive of photographs. Through your efforts, every stored object and artwork in our collection will have a high-quality, searchable digital record for generations to come.

Apply at the link in bio.

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Apr 2

Open

Passionate about collections and the arts? Join us as a Digitisation Volunteer! The National Art School Archive and Collection team is looking for enthusiastic Digitisation Volunteers to help bring our art collection to life! Your work will play a key role in making art and history more accessible—by photographing and recording our collections, enhancing our museum database, and digitising our extensive archive of photographs. Through your efforts, every stored object and artwork in our collection will have a high-quality, searchable digital record for generations to come. Apply at the link in bio.

Opening night: Gesture and Trace

Join us on Saturday 12 April for the opening night of Gesture and Trace, a collaborative exhibition with the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts (LAFA), Shenyang, China. Featuring 16 students and recent alumni from the National Art School (NAS) and LAFA’s Textiles and Chinese Ink Departments, this exhibition explores cross-cultural perspectives on drawing and material practices.

This exhibition is presented by the National Centre for Drawing, in conjunction with Facture: Drawing Symposium 2025.

Purchase your tickets to the symposium at the link in bio.

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Apr 1

Open

Bring a friend to Winter School and save!

We’re offering a 15% discount on the purchase of a second Winter School course—as part of our exclusive ‘bring a friend’ special.

How it works:

1. Sign up for any Winter School course
2. Invite a friend to join you on the learning journey
3. Get 15% off when you purchase a second course for yourself or your friend

Learn more at the link in bio.

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Mar 31

Open

Introducing Sean O`Connell and Pia van Gelder, speakers at Facture: Drawing Symposium 2025
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Moderated by Ben Denham, Sean will explore traditional and extended practices that map connections and energetic exchange within abstracted landscapes, while Pia will discuss drawing of electronic circuits and their curious divinatory elements in 20th century radionics and their own work with electrodermal activity and audio synthesis.
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Sean O`Connell is an artist exploring the internal world of matter and the movement of electrical energy and force. He uses alternative photographic techniques, electronic circuitry, noise, energetic structures and experimental processes to visualise and sonify these spaces of interest. His work is concerned with the realms of both matter and electricity, exploring the ways they each transform, modulate, and inform one another`s nature through their interaction.
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Pia van Gelder is an electronic artist, researcher and historian at the School of Art and Design at the Australian National University. Their research investigates historical and contemporary conceptions of energy and how these shape our relationships with technologies, bodies and environments. Their scholarship has concentrated on the influence of esotericism on electronic instruments of the 20th century and their studio practice produces instruments for performance and installation contexts. Their current project *The Energies Artists Say* with co-editor Douglas Kahn, presents a methodology for understanding the polyvalence of energies in practices across the arts.
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Facture: Drawing Symposium 2025
Saturday 12 April 2025
Facture – The manner in which something is made
—
Learn more about the speakers and symposium at the link in bio.

View

Mar 28

Open

Introducing Sean O'Connell and Pia van Gelder, speakers at Facture: Drawing Symposium 2025
—
Moderated by Ben Denham, Sean will explore traditional and extended practices that map connections and energetic exchange within abstracted landscapes, while Pia will discuss drawing of electronic circuits and their curious divinatory elements in 20th century radionics and their own work with electrodermal activity and audio synthesis.
—
Sean O'Connell is an artist exploring the internal world of matter and the movement of electrical energy and force. He uses alternative photographic techniques, electronic circuitry, noise, energetic structures and experimental processes to visualise and sonify these spaces of interest. His work is concerned with the realms of both matter and electricity, exploring the ways they each transform, modulate, and inform one another's nature through their interaction.
—
Pia van Gelder is an electronic artist, researcher and historian at the School of Art and Design at the Australian National University. Their research investigates historical and contemporary conceptions of energy and how these shape our relationships with technologies, bodies and environments. Their scholarship has concentrated on the influence of esotericism on electronic instruments of the 20th century and their studio practice produces instruments for performance and installation contexts. Their current project *The Energies Artists Say* with co-editor Douglas Kahn, presents a methodology for understanding the polyvalence of energies in practices across the arts.
—
Facture: Drawing Symposium 2025
Saturday 12 April 2025
Facture – The manner in which something is made
—
Learn more about the speakers and symposium at the link in bio.

We’re looking for a Facilities and Risk Manager - Application Deadline Sunday 13 April

The Facilities and Risk Manager effectively manages and organises services and resources for the facilities, workshop, security, WHS, and campus operations of National Art School in Darlinghurst. In addition, they provide strategic support and advice to senior management on all issues related to facilities and campus operations.

Apply at the link in bio.

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Mar 27

Open

We’re looking for a Facilities and Risk Manager - Application Deadline Sunday 13 April The Facilities and Risk Manager effectively manages and organises services and resources for the facilities, workshop, security, WHS, and campus operations of National Art School in Darlinghurst. In addition, they provide strategic support and advice to senior management on all issues related to facilities and campus operations. Apply at the link in bio.

Introducing Kirtika Kain and Kyra Mancktelow, speakers at Facture: Drawing Symposium 2025
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Moderated by Chelsea Lehmann, Kirtika will be discussing the role of drawing in process, experimentation, and abstraction in material and socially-engaged practices, while Kyra will discuss the influence Dylan Mooney`s work has had on their practice, especially his most recent exhibition The Story of My People.
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Kirtika Kain is an artist practicing on Darug Country, New South Wales, Australia. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2016 and was awarded the Bird Holcomb Scholarship to complete her Master of Fine Art in 2018 at the National Art School, Sydney. She was a recipient of the Lloyd Rees Memorial Youth Art Award in 2017, the Art Incubator Grant and Dyason Bequest, Art Gallery of New South Wales, and a finalist in the Churchill Fellowship and numerous art prizes including Blacktown Art Prize (2017, 2019). Kirtika has been a finalist in the Create NSW Emerging Artist Fellowship at Artspace, a recipient of the Parramatta Artist Studio (2020, 2024) and an artist in residence at the British School at Rome (2019) and the Amant Siena Summer Residency (2022).
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Kyra Mancktelow’s multidisciplinary practice investigates legacies of colonialism, posing important questions such as how we remember and acknowledge Indigenous histories. A Quandamooka artist with links to the Mardigan people of Cunnamulla, Kyra’s practice includes printmaking, ceramics, and sculpture – each applying a unique and distinct aesthetic. Kyra works with various materials to share her rich heritage, stories, and traditions to educate audiences and strengthen her connection to Country. Her printmaking explores intergenerational trauma as a result of forced integration on colonial missions, and her use of local materials in her sculpture, including clay, emu features, and Talwalpin (cotton tree), strengthens her connection to Country.
—
Facture: Drawing Symposium 2025
Saturday 12 April 2025
Facture – The manner in which something is made
—
Learn more about the speakers and symposium at the link in bio.

View

Mar 27

Open

What Matters? Queer Poetry Slam