SHOULD LOVE COME FIRST?
In 1951, American artist Robert Rauschenberg painted Should Love Come First? Purportedly autobiographical, it was produced at a time when his marriage was disintegrating, a son had just been born, and he was commencing a love affair with fellow artist Cy Twombly. The original painting, subsequently overpainted, featured the artist’s footprint opposite a diagram showing the male steps for the walz. Read together, they comprise a coded and complex evocation of male to male love.
Sixty years on, the borrowed title serves as a provocation for the artists featured in this exhibition, who variously engage in a queer take on notions of love. Ephemeral and abstract, personal and universal, social and political, love comes to the fore with multiple, complex and transformative properties.
Artists: Jo Mears, Sarah Murphy, Alex Plumb, Ponti, Louise Purvis, Ahilapalapa Rands, Deborah Rundle,
Ash Spittal, Imogen Taylor and Layne Waerea.
Sixty years on, the borrowed title serves as a provocation for the artists featured in this exhibition, who variously engage in a queer take on notions of love. Ephemeral and abstract, personal and universal, social and political, love comes to the fore with multiple, complex and transformative properties.
Artists: Jo Mears, Sarah Murphy, Alex Plumb, Ponti, Louise Purvis, Ahilapalapa Rands, Deborah Rundle,
Ash Spittal, Imogen Taylor and Layne Waerea.
