Iconic artist William Yang shares tales from the front lines of the Australian queer scene of the 1980s
William Yang was given his first camera at seventeen. But it wasn’t until he moved to Sydney in the 1960s that he decided to become a photographer.
He became known for capturing the experience of his community in Sydney, documenting the subcultures of the seventies, eighties and nineties from the evolution of the Sydney Madi Gras, to the infamous RAT Parties where he worked alongside party planners and promoters Jac Vidgen, Billy Yip and Reno Dal.
At Bundanon William Yang will share his own stories from the 1980s and reflect on the highs and lows of the LGBTQIA+ scene.
William Yang
William Yang is a Queensland-born, Sydney-based photographer whose significant contributions to Australian photography spans over five decades. Known for his reflective and joyous depictions of Australia’s queer scene in the 1970s and 1980s through to the present, Yang’s photography is informed by the cultural and political pressures of growing up as a gay man from a Chinese immigrant family in north Queensland.
Yang’s documentary photography encompasses explorations of cultural and sexual identities and depictions of landscape. His photographic practice is integrated with writing, video, and performance, and is grounded in narrative and storytelling.
Wilder Times
Wilder Times sees the return of a series of Shoalhaven landscape paintings by Arthur Boyd to Bundanon for the first time since their creation in 1984 as a commission for the new Arts Centre Melbourne.
The exhibition also brings together over 60 works by seminal Australian artists from the same time Boyd created this momentous body of work. The exhibition provides a window into a period of cultural dynamism in Australia, when ideas of landscape, land ownership and environmental protection were actively interrogated.
