Paul Yore, HANG IN THERE, 2020. Wool needlepoint, 45 x 29 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide.

Gippsland-based artist Paul Yore’s solo exhibition Crown of Thorns brings together new textiles, assemblages and collages, continuing the artist’s decade-long personal and candid investigation into the intersection of religion, sex, politics and popular culture.

Taking its title from a passage in the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus is mockingly dressed in purple and adorned with a crown of twisted thorns, Yore’s exhibition readily draws upon the iconography of his Catholic upbringing, most notably the cross or crucifixion. However, Yore’s irreverent treatment of traditional subjects is laced with a queer critique of the foundational institutions of “Western” society; specifically the moralising presence of a corrupt Church, and its role in propping up a broken political system, a dynamic which in turn has fuelled centuries of colonial violence, as well as the subjugation of women, trans and queer people.

Exhibition opens: 6–8pm Thursday 6 February 2020

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