What’s On Sydney: The Party
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“The Party celebrates LGBTQIA+ nightlife and party culture in Sydney from 1973 to 2002.” It was co-curated by José Da Silva & Nick Henderson to be a nostalgic look back at the heyday of the Sydney party scene – back before those pesky responsible service of alcohol and devastating lock-outs laws came into effect!
Star Observer had some Zoom time with Henderson who readily admits that this exhibition took him and Da Silva back to the good old days, saying laughingly, “Absolutely, both José and I are part of the community and so we’re coming at this as people who see themselves in these events.
“While my party, I guess… ‘career’ (laughing) if you can call it that, started more in the late nineties, a lot of these histories that we’re focusing on go back to the early 70s, so they’re not personal experiences but they talk to aspects of the kind of party culture that I’m familiar with.
“Whether or not that’s the music or particular DJ’s, the spaces which are no longer extant and used and it could even be the drugs and other aspects – one of the things with this exhibition is we’re not censoring to try and say, this didn’t happen and that didn’t happen – this isn’t a rose-tinted glasses sort of exhibition.”
Experience The Nuance Behind The Parties
There is so much memorabilia that people have collected over the years, making it impossible to include everything in the exhibition.
The curators have come up with a way for guests to experience the nuance behind the parties and the exhibition itself, saying, “We’re doing a catalogue that includes a whole lot more and so part of that is that some of the lenders and some of the other significant creatives who were involved are contributing written reflections or historical pieces to try and draw out some of those different threads.
“The mythology of some of these parties, like when snow fell during the Mardi Gras after party or when the mirror ball fell and hit somebody on the head – lots of different things that happened in different parties that people can recall or maybe not recall entirely but have heard the stories – that’s the drugs – and so people will be hopefully excited to see some of the people they may know as a name on a poster but haven’t always heard some of the stories!”
The Party – UNSW Galleries – January 14 to 29
