William Yang's Closet: UQ in the 1960s

As part of Wear it Purple Day 2024, join us for a conversation with renowned queer artist William Yang as he discusses the journey through his ‘closet’ as a young adult in the 1960s at The University of Queensland.

Hosted by Dr Amelia Barikin, Senior Lecturer Art History, UQ, and researcher in queer Australian art, this intimate talk will explore Yang’s coming to terms with his queerness in the context of homophobic 1960s Queensland, and how he used art as a transformative medium to navigate and express identity, eventually becoming a nationally treasured and influential queer artist.

Join us at the UQ Art Museum from 4.30pm for refreshments and an after-hours viewing of exhibitions Hoda Afshar: A Curve is a Broken Line, Dusk of Nations and Vibrant Matter, and the current display in the Collection Study Room. 

4.30pm: Doors open, exhibition viewing
5.30pm: Talk begins 
6.30pm: Talk concludes, and join us for refreshments in the Foyer
7.30pm: Event concludes

This is a free event. All attendees must register and show tickets to UQ Art Museum Staff upon entry. 

Please inform us of any accessibility requirements through the registration page. Please note that a two week lead time is required to secure Auslan interpretation for this event. Visit our website for our accessibility information. 
 

William Yang was born in 1943, Mareeba, Queensland and is now based in Sydney, New South Wales.  

Renowned for being a pre-eminent Australian photographer known for an intensely sustained body of work that examines issues of cultural and sexual identity, Yang unflinchingly documents the lives of his friends and community and his own lived experience with curiosity, sensitivity and humour. He was given his first camera at seventeen, beginning his photographic practice as a student at the University of Queensland, where he studied architecture. In the late 1960s Yang moved to Sydney where he soon became known for his documentation of the Sydney LGBTIQ+ community, including the evolution of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras, and for photographic series engaging with the impact of HIV/AIDS on his friends and community, his sense of identity as a Chinese-Australian, and his family history and relationships. 

Significant exhibitions featuring Yang’s work include Life Lines (part of The China Project), Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2009); Claiming China, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney (2008); Diaries, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney (1998); Sydney Photographed, MCA, Sydney (1994); From Bondi to Uluru, Higashikawa Arts Centre, Hokkaido (1993); Sydneyphiles, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney (1977); A Chinese Legacy, University of Queensland, Brisbane (2007); World Without End, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2000); On the Edge: Australian Photographers of the Seventies, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego (1998); and Art in the Age of AIDS, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (1994). 

Dr Amelia Barikin is a senior Lecturer in Art History in the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland. Her research often focusses on the relationship between contemporary art and time, working across the areas of philosophy, time studies, art history and critical theory. She completed her art history PhD at the University of Melbourne and prior to joining UQ, Dr Barikin was ARC Senior Research Associate at the University of Melbourne. She also worked as a curator and editor with various arts institutions. 

Dr Barikin is an author of many texts, including the monograph Parallel Presents: The Art of Pierre Huyghe (MIT Press, 2012, winner of AAANZ Best Book Prize 2013); the co-edited anthology and now low-key cult classic Making Worlds: Art and Science Fiction (Surpllus, 2015); Pierre Huyghe: TarraWarra International 2015 (catalogue for the first major solo exhibition of Huyghe's work in Australia); Tom Nicholson: Lines Towards Another (IMA and Sternberg Press, 2018); and Robert Smithson: Time Crystals (Monash University Publishing, 2018), the latter published to accompany a major exhibition of works by Robert Smithson that she co-curated with Chris McAuliffe for presentation at the UQ Art Museum and Monash University Museum of Art. Dr Barikin’s research has been supported by organisations including the Australia Council for the Arts, Creative Australia, Arts Victoria, the Terra Foundation for American Art, City of Melbourne, the Australia Korea Foundation, the Australia Research Council, and the Gordon Darling Foundation, and she also publishes widely in arts magazines and exhibition catalogues. 

Dr Barikin has presented invited talks on her research at numerous institutions including for the Biennale of Sydney, Mildura Palimpsest Biennale, Wellington City Gallery New Zealand, Marian Goodman Gallery New York, the Australian Center for the Moving Image, Institute of Modern Art Brisbane, Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art Brisbane, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, Gertrude Contemporary, Auckland University of Technology, Institute for Visual Research University of Oxford, Artspace Sydney, and Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts, Finland. In 2013, she was the recipient of a 2013 Art Gallery of New South Wales residential fellowship at the Cité internationale des arts, Paris. 

Her current work includes research into the histories of queer art in Australia, as part of the KINK research collective, accessible at queeraustralianart.com. In 2024, KINK were appointed as Adjunct Curators to the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.