Basket Case 2024

Summary

This painting by Peter Waples-Crowe is from a series of collage paintings called 'Good Grief So Gay!!'. In each painting, collaged sections of legendary artist Tom of Finland's homoerotic illustrations are contrasted against Waples-Crowe's own queer mob sexuality and culture. The works serve as a way of working through grief after a long-term relationship ended by the death of the artist's partner. Waples-Crowe has explored the queer leather subculture, finding fun, joy and connections but in these works holds a position of reflection and critique of the experience.

Peter Waples-Crowe is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the intersection of an indigenous queer identity, spirituality and Australia's ongoing colonisation. Influenced by his adoption and a later reconnection to his Ngarigo heritage, his art comments on the world as a contested site for his multiple identities. Referencing many disparate ideas and themes, his work is autoethnographic by nature, and largely based on personal experiences.