Penelope Benton’s collaborative practice with her partner Alexandra Clapham explores the connections and tensions in their work and relationship in the context of the Queer Baroque, a term used to describe the intersection of similarities between Camp and Baroque cultural genres. Their practice incorporates performance, installation and other ephemeral mediums to explore the concept of the tableau vivant. The Icing on the Cake investigates the tensions of their collaborative practice both in relation to their art-making and relationship.

Throughout the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, sugar played a leading role at baroque banquets in the form of decorative showpieces created to entertain and impress guests of the host. Adapting the idea of the 'showpiece' through the Queer Baroque, this exhibition presents three separate works using still performance, video and installation.

In this exhibition, the baroque banquet table, a central motif in the artists’ collaborative practice, is presented as a platform (both literal and symbolic), able to engage with questions of taste, consumption, identity and difference. 
 

7pm Friday 3 March
Opening night performance features Anthony Aitch, Yasmina Black, Mat Hornby, Joy Ng and Latai Taumoepeau.

10.15am Wednesday 15 March
Second performance features KoCo Carey, Kelli Jean Drinkwater, Samara Shehata, Justin Shoulder and Matthew Stegh.

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Presented in conjunction with 'Penelope Benton: The Icing on the Cake' at UNSW Galleries.

Image: Penelope Benton Tableau Vivant 2013-17. Installation view, 'The Icing on the Cake', UNSW Galleries, 2017. Photo: Silversalt Photography