LOUIS GRANT

10 - 20 March 2022 @ CCAS MANUKA

Queer people grow up performing versions of ourselves. Trying to fit into ‘normal’ conventions, familial identities, and social contexts that favour the heterosexual, the masculine and the white.  

As children growing up queer, at a time when we are making sense of the world and are highly attuned to what is around us, small stressors that point to us or our identity being different is damaging. Having to perform actions, interactions, relationships and identities that are not truly ours is damaging. Dealing with the lasting effects of this compounded trauma and unpicking which parts of ourselves are truly us, and not a performance, is the task in-front of us as adults.

Breakable Heaven explores themes of personal identity through methods of unbecoming, unmaking and undoing through the ‘queer art of failure’ to strip back the performance of self to find an authentic, raw and nuanced voice. The show presents sentiments of love, loss, shame and celebration through material explorations in glass, delving into the idea of glass being queer.

Image: Louis Grant, Marked Me Like a Blood Stain, 2020, kiln formed and cold worked glass, set of two panels, photo by Adam McGrath.