MAPh is currently seeking expressions of interests for its touring exhibition The Huxleys | Bad sports.
Will and Garrett Huxley (AUS and Gumbaynggirr/Yorta Yorta) are Melbourne based collaborative performance and visual artists.
The Huxleys are a dynamic duo of cataclysmic proportion who present camp commentary and spectacle across the visual art, performance and entertainment sectors. Their photography and performance art traverses the classifications of costume, film and recording.
The Huxleys were the recipients of the 2023 Wai Tang Commissioning Award and they responded with a new body of work that has all the hallmarks of the humour, wit and outrageousness we know and love them for.
The Huxleys | Bad sports reflects upon the ostracisation you can feel when growing up in a country that values sporting achievement above all else. It can be a real struggle, especially for a creative, shy queer kid searching for kindred spirits. A love of music, art, fashion and the dark underworld is perceived to offer eventual artistic salvation.
Bad sports seeks to capture the alienation, humour and abstraction that The Huxleys experienced growing up in this sunburnt country, from the larrikins looking for a fair go, a guernsey and a winning streak. For the uncoordinated and uncooperative queer prisoner, the struggle is real.
Thrust into the ferocious floodlights of the playing field, Bad sports becomes a performative way for queer people at odds with sports to feel like they can ‘play’ figuratively, creatively and physically. To allow the ridiculous feats of fashions on the field to harmonise with The Huxleys’ gloriously ‘bent’ vision of the world. The Dadaist notion in full athletic prowess; a giant sequinned ball lunges for the ball in play. Art imitating sport: finally at peace with one another.
