Ongoing from October 2025
Surrounding area around Walker Street Gallery and Arts Centre
This project proposes lying down as an act of radical queerness.
Set amongst the concrete playground of the Dandenong, surrounding Walker Street Gallery and Arts Centre (which might be read as masculine), ‘Lying down in public places’ is just what it sounds like: a body at rest.
Through this rest, lying down becomes an act of extreme gentleness and care, amongst the hard surfaces of the city: surfaces the artist associates with a ‘masculine’ city.
The work extends Hart’s interest in how queer bodies take up space in the public domain - and the politics of revealing and concealing that are intrinsically linked to this idea.
In thinking about gender as a spectrum, and the capacity of the non-binary body to be both a site of protest and a tool of protest, this work (realised through both photography and live performance), seeks ways to queer public space, subtly. This body at rest asks us to consider softness, queerness and release as acts of resistance.
Concept and realisation: Gareth Hart
Photography: Cathy Ronalds
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A person lying on the ground
