New Queers on the Block 2022
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LGBTQIA+ artist and community development programme.
Over the last four years, Home Live Art have been working with Marlborough Productions and a network of venues in England to support the artistic development of a number of exciting LGBTQIA+ performers through the New Queers on the Block initiative.
Now the programme has commissioned four new artists to embark on a 6-month residency period. The intention is for each artist to spend time in Hastings to focus on developing their artistic practices with the possibility to share their work and engage with local LGBTQIA+ audiences and communities.
Alongside this a South East based artist will receive a bursary to support them to develop their work and practice.
Three of the artists were selected via an open call which received over 220 applications. The three awards went to multidisciplinary artist, Rowdy SS, acerbically political performer Tammy Reynolds and UK-based Chinese drag king, Whiskey Chow. A fourth commission was awarded in partnership with the arts commissioning programme for disabled artists Unlimited and the Asian arts and culture non-profit Bagri Foundation, who chose award-winning cross-disciplinary artist and filmmaker Estabrak.
NQOTB 2022 artists
Rowdy SS works at the intersections of sound, music, dance, movement and live art performance alongside making video. International performances and works have explored love, energy, emotions, feelings, identity and the societal constructs surrounding them. Rowdy will use his residencies to explore each of his practices and continue to develop his ongoing dance/sound/visual performance work BALANCE.
Tammy Reynolds performs as themselves as well as their drag alter-ego Midgitte Bardot. Their work invokes a revolutionary zeal in the most inhibited of people, bringing new horizons of power, disgust, and the brute force of confronting our shared humanity on a dying planet. Whilst in residency, Tammy will explore circus and ‘freak show’ heritage whilst developing their own artistic practice.
Whiskey Chow’s interdisciplinary work combines embodied performance with moving image and experimental sound. Her practice engages with broadly defined political issues, from queer masculinity, problematising the nation-state across geographic boundaries, to Chinese/Asian identity. Whiskey’s residencies will explore queer fight, using the philosophy of martial arts legend Bruce Lee: “Using no way as way; having no limitation as limitation” as a starting point.
Estabrak’s work is multi-sensory in approach. She uses live techniques, film, projection, sound, performance, paint, installation, (underwater) photography, sculpture, words and public participation to help highlight and dismantle ignored socio-political realities. Estabrak’s residency time will be spent creating backgammon sets to instigate conversation with West Asian and North African diaspora in the UK.
NQOTB 2022 Network Partners
Art B&B and LeftCoast in Blackpool, Bradford Producing Hub and Theatre in the Mill in Bradford, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts in Brighton, Creative Folkestone, Home Live Art in Hastings, Cambridge Junction and Unlimited.
New Queers on the Block is funded by Arts Council England, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
