We acknowledge the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of the Country on which the Art Gallery of New South Wales stands.

Sweet Incites

Four people standing and sitting on a staircase, looking directly into the camera.

Sweet Incites artists-in-residence (from left) Brian Fuata, Leo Tsao, Al Joel and Blu Jay, photo: Lexi Laphor

As part of Sydney WorldPride 2023, the Art Gallery of New South Wales has offered Sweet Incites residencies to four artists.

Brian Fuata, Blu Jay, Al Joel and Leo Tsao have undertaken extensive research at the Art Gallery to create new performance work, such as improvisational workshops, experimental video and sound, and alternative framing of LGBTQIA+ ephemera from archival material.

The work has been developed during the artists’ time in residence at the Art Gallery in December 2022 and January 2023.

Al Joel has been in the Art Gallery’s library and archive, while Brian Fuata, Blu Jay and Leo Tsao will draw from their encounters with other spaces in the Art Gallery and the daily flow of visitors.

The artists will present the outcomes of their residencies as part of the program of events for Sydney WorldPride at the Art Gallery.

About the artists and their works

Brian Fuata

Brian Fuata works in the improvisation of live and mediated performance. His work often stages the given institutional context into what he calls ‘dumb zones of dramatic affects’ by using multiple registers of physical and verbal expression to correspond with various material and immaterial things to generate content.

As part of his Sweet Incites residency, Fuata is developing new work in collaboration with multidisciplinary Takatāpui artist BLECK; horticulturalist and artist Paris Taia; Cook Island–Australian artist Morgan Hogg; and artist Ileini Kabalan. The work is in an open studio format in the Art Gallery’s North Building, with improvisations and performances occurring intermittently throughout the festival period.

Blu Jay

Blu Jay is a multidisciplinary artist whose work as a performer under the moniker Limerence spans drag and experimental performance and explores the human condition, space and time, and Afrofuturism.

As part of their Sweet Incites residency, Blu Jay is developing performances of playful and surreal choreographies that show how fantasy and the speculative can transform everyday movements and exchanges. The work is being developed in collaboration with composition and sound designer Aarti Jadu.

Al Joel

Al Joel is an artist and set designer with an interest in memory and  interior space, working across events, stage, screen and print. Her creative practice is informed by the relationship between her professional work and a longstanding personal interest in Sydney’s urban development, DIY cultures, queer experiences and the changing ways we live in public. 

As a part of her Sweet Incites residency, she is creating a radio play that uses archival materials, interviews and sound to explore some idiosyncratic social spaces from the past, present and future. 

Visitors will be able to listen to this radio play in the Art Gallery library and archive in June 2023, and see a presentation of visual resources collected during the making of the work. 

Leo Tsao

Leo Tsao is a Taiwanese–Australian artist and filmmaker with an experimental practice. He often brings together disparate and unlikely disciplines and collaborators through formal explorations to rupture expectations, heteronormativity and whiteness to create new modes of perception and possibilities.

As part of his Sweet Incites residency, he is exploring the discordance between perceptions of bodies and their characteristics, and the associations we make with them. Through the playing of a drum kit that edits together video and vocal fragments to create ever-changing aural and visual rhythms, Tsao examines how the resonance, frequency, tone and style of speech of a voice affect its power. The work is being presented in collaboration with Holly Conner and Wendy Yu.

Scheduled performance events

Past events