A year-long cultural exchange between the Isle of Wight & Brighton involving exhibitions, workshops & live events.
Ladypat and Boogaloo Stu share a love of psychedelic and surreal pop art, informed by their maverick queer sensibility. In ‘Queer Hearts’, they share their eye-popping artworks and rally their local communities to celebrate queer heroes, starting with an exhibition at Ventnor Exchange from 5th Nov 2022.
Island Based Artist and IW Creative Network member Ladypat and Brighton-based Artist Boogaloo Stu have worked together on many creative projects over the past 20 years, with Ladypat creating many pop videos and live show visuals for Stu’s musical endeavours.
Ladypat’s startling and singular Queer Arts career has included 4 billion GIF views, 100+ homespun music videos and a stellar VJ career upending video screens all across Europe. These days his plus-size fuzzy felt pop-art is a hit at galleries across the UK. He started by publishing DIY websites in the pre-social media era of Flash, became a superstar VJ in the golden era of software development and affordable and faster hardware, used the advent of YouTube to accelerate the reach of his irreverent pop promos and reimagined his archive as GIFs for the internet addicts of today. In this way his work has reached hundreds of thousands of hedonists at live events and multi-million playbacks online.
From his roots in fashion design, cabaret performance and DJ-ing, Boogaloo Stu subsequently sharpened his skills as a theatre-maker; with his audience always at the heart of his work, he developed and toured nationally with a number of unique and innovative theatre shows. More recently, he has honed his talents as a visual artist, creating a series of strikingly beautiful dioramas and limited edition prints, taking inspiration from 1970s psychedelic illustration, alongside product design from the time.
Queer Hearts starts with a free exhibition and art workshops at Ventnor Exchange from 5th Nov until 18th Dec 2022. The project then moves to Brighton’s Jubilee Library in early 2023, concluding in May 2023 with a cultural exchange, visiting the Brighton Fringe, to forge friendships among queer people and further open up a cultural dialogue between the two locations.
Partnering with local charity organisations; IW youth charity Brave Island and LGBTQ+ mental health charity MindOut in Brighton, the ‘Queer Hearts Awards’ workshops will be a 121 experience for local queer people and their allies, to create an artwork with a message dedicated to a queer person who made a positive impact on their lives. These artworks will be displayed in the galleries and then digitally archived afterwards.
Follow @queerheartsawards on Instagram for the latest updates on exhibitions, workshops and events.
Queer Hearts is supported by Arts Council England, Ventnor Exchange, Brave Island, Mind Out, Brighton Jubilee Library, Marlborough Productions and Brighton Fringe.
Main image by Ben Francis.
