Ginger Beer: a queer art exhibition co-curated by Rowan Waller and Ben Hartley at The Island, Bristol.

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As co-curators Rowan Waller (@leafyteefy) and Ben Hartley (@ben_hart9) explained to me, “Ginger beer is cockney rhyming slang for queer, so we were reclaiming the term and celebrating queer artists and their work, but we also wanted to keep the branding of the exhibition fun and casual, and not stuffy.”

Ginger Beer is a small yet fascinating exhibition, envisioned by a group of Lgbtq+ artists to coincide with Lgbtq+ history month and sponsored by The Island in Bristol, whose manifesto is to foster a community spirit and to be a platform for artistic experimentation.

The exhibition features artists such as Emily Buchanan, Hope Carroll, Charlie Cunnington, Ben Hartley, Flo Lily, Jasmine Marsh (@jfmarshart), Izzy Mooney, Kirstin Ringham (https://kirstinringham.wordpress.com) and Nathan Taylor (https://www.nathananthonytaylor.co.uk).

Ginger Beer’s main goal to shy away from more “academic” exhibitions basically enables the audience to experience every artworks with a multi-sensorial and non-direct approach.

The audience is actively engaged to create meaning out of the artworks, mainly addressing issues of identity, sexuality and gaze: the absence of blurbs or of any descriptive information remove the barriers between artists, artworks, audience and space.

Ben Hartley, © Kirstin Ringham

As Ben states, The video piece “character development” (presented on a monitor in the dark space) is a screen recording of a performance lasting 20 minutes. In this video I play a character exploring the internet and developing their personality through viewing, liking and reblogging imagery on social media. I wanted to explore themes of identity construction in the digital world.

What really intrigued me is the way in which Ben plays with digital and pop culture, creating an interesting interplay between himself and the computer.