On the occasion of Gemma Rolls-Bentley’s recent publication Queer Art: From Canvas to Club and the Spaces Between, the Research Forum invites Gemma to host a panel discussion called ‘Finding Queertopia’. Gemma invites Fiontán Moran, Tate Modern Curator, and Rene Matić, artist, to join her as they explore how queer spaces, bodies, and identities have been shaped and represented throughout art history. The conversation will delve into the ways queer people have used art as a form of worldbuilding, envisioning radical futures that challenge dominant cultural narratives. Fiontán Moran will discuss how curatorial practices can provide space for queer experiences that draw together a range of disciplines and approaches to artistic practice. Rene Matić will reflect on the significance of community, the club, and other queer spaces as sites of utopian possibility, where new modes of belonging and resistance are forged.
Together, the panel will investigate the intersections of lived experience, activism, and artistic practice, examining how these elements come together to create spaces of possibility and desire. By reflecting on the past while looking toward the future, this discussion will consider how queer utopias might reshape the present through collective imagination and artistic expression.
Organised in collaboration with Dorothy Price, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Critical Race Art History, The Courtauld.
Speakers
Gemma Rolls-Bentley has been at the forefront of contemporary art for almost two decades, working passionately to amplify the work of queer artists and provide a platform for art that explores LGBTQIA+ identity. She curates exhibitions, builds art collections, and leads projects internationally. Most recently she curated the group exhibition Dreaming of Home at Leslie Lohman Museum of Art in NYC and the Tom of Finland Art & Culture Festival in London. She curated the ‘Brighton Beacon Collection’, the largest permanent display of queer art in the UK. Gemma is a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art and has sat on the boards of numerous organisations and charities that support diversity in the arts. Her debut book Queer Art: From Canvas to Club, and the Spaces Between was published by Quarto in May 2024.
Rene Matić (b. 1997, Peterborough, UK) is a London-based artist and writer whose practice spans across photography, film, and sculpture, converging in a meeting place they describe as “rude(ness)” – an evidencing and honouring of the in-between. Matić draws inspiration from dance and music movements such as Northern soul, Ska, and 2-Tone as a tool to delve into the complex relationship between West Indian and white working-class culture in Britain, whilst privileging queer/ing intimacies, partnerships and pleasure as modes of survival.
Fiontán Moran (b. 1986, London) is curator of International Art at Tate Modern where he works on exhibitions, performance, displays, and acquisitions for the Tate Collection. He has worked on exhibitions of Marlene Dumas, Steve McQueen and Andy Warhol, performances with Trisha Brown Dance Company, Kelela, Wolfgang Tillmans and Tunga, and film screenings of Wu Tsang, Anand Patwardhan, and Peter Watkins. He recently co-curated the exhibition Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit with Catherine Wood, and is preparing the exhibition Leigh Bowery! that will open in February 2025. Outside of Tate he writes and performs, and is the founder of the zine Death Becomes Herr, and part of the collective Queer CAMPerVAN.
