Open Call for artworks that promote a sex-positive, thoughtful, innovative, and daring approach to the lived LGBTQ+ experience in 2024, or challenge HIV-related stigma.
Submissions are invited from artists for Out of the strong, came forth sweetness, an exhibition taking place in autumn/winter 2024, celebrating art’s role in shaking stigma, fostering inclusivity, and sparking crucial conversations about sexual health and education.
Initiated by Gay Health Network to mark 30 years of the organisation and curated by artist Brian Teeling, the exhibition will include both historical artworks and new works that embody the LGBTQ+ experience in the present day. Gay Health Network are a leading force in advocating for sexual health, HIV prevention, and inclusive sexual education, working in Ireland across the last four decades.
Brian Teeling (b. 1987) is an Irish multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Dublin.
Entirely self-taught and without fine art qualifications, his work explores queer working-class dynamics, memory, and psychogeography. Teeling’s expansive practice often combines portraiture and poetics to reflect on romance, melancholy and petro-masculinity.
This open call is launched in memory of Oliver Stanley, who died in April 1995 from AIDS- related complications. Oliver designed and appears on the flyer for the club Shaft, photographed by Conor Horgan. Conor has said of Oliver, “He was a vibrant, waspishly funny and deeply kind man, who made a real difference to many people’s lives in the gay community and beyond. Remembered with love by those that knew him.”
