Luke Thurgate installation of Adore You. Courtesy: the artist and NAS Galleries, Sydney. Photography: Samu Carvajal.

The National Art School presents Queer Contemporary, the visual arts program for Sydney WorldPride 2023 and the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. As part of several exhibitions and a suite of public activities, key community partnerships, and site activations, they will exhibit work by Luke Thurgate in Adore You.

Thurgate is an artist and educator based in Sydney. He teaches drawing and painting at the National Art School, where he is currently completing his Master of Fine Art. Thurgate has an extensive exhibition history including recent exhibitions at Backwoods Gallery, Burra Regional Art Gallery, National Art School and Adelaide Central Gallery. He was a finalist in the 2019 Dobell Drawing Prize, the 2020 Tom Bass Figurative Sculpture Prize and the 2020 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award.

The artist’s multi-disciplinary studio practice explores the construction and deconstruction of ‘identity’ in relation to masculinity, sexuality, romance and fear. His current work uses the monster as a surrogate ’other’ to explore tensions between parody and sincerity, menace and pathos, vulnerability and power. Thurgate’s work borrows from a range of sources, including popular culture, pornography, and queer history.

This exhibition will be held in the Drawing Gallery, NAS Galleries.

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