Lucy Chetcuti, Look at me right now, we are doing this together, 2025, oil, pastel and wax on poly cotton, Image Brenton McGeachie
There will be a place of joy and beauty, where good vanquishes the evil forces that oppress and enslave the human spirit. Where difference is sacred. Where stars shine down to fill hearts with hope. Where connection and love can be sought and found, where everything you have been and everything you could be will be met with a warm embrace.
Imagine the possibility of another world, one that has never existed before this day. Your next step is the beginning of the end. Tread lightly through the world, leaving joy and beauty in your path. Honour the dead and dying. Fight for the living.
Thought forms from the queer utopia imaginarium is an exhibition of imaginative new works that arise in a complex and dystopian time. These horrors are not new to many people, there is a heightened awareness that the structures holding the Western world together are failing now more than ever. In order to fight for a better world, we must first imagine that another world is possible. This requires creativity, hope, and determination. Queer Utopianism is not merely fantasy or escapism, it's a socio-political tool which inspires change.
This exhibition reaches for an idealised queer utopia in response to the rise of fascism, white supremacy and imminent climate collapse. What does it mean to choose to move forward with a vision and inspire hope for conscious world-building? How can we create sanctuaries of safety and community for the oppressed and ensure their survival? There is an argument to be made that there is no better time than now to dream of something better. Our capacity for change is determined by the limits of our imagination, and creativity is a necessary condition of hope.
Cultivating a utopian vision for the future, nurturing it, and sharing it is just one small step in the work that must be done. The vivid, abstract paintings in this exhibition are inspired by tree canopies, seen through the eyes of a queer person searching for hope, joy, beauty, intimacy, community and connection. The works are an expression of a deeply personal inner world, coded in the language of abstraction.
"We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created."
- Audre Lorde
Opening Celebration
Launched By Hetty Gascoigne, Head Curator at the ANU Drill Hall Gallery
Saturday 8 August, 2026
5:30 ~ 7:30pm
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Artist Talk
Saturday 15 August, 2026
3pm
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Sydney Fringe Performance
Featuring Genie Stuart
Saturday 29 August, 2026
4 ~ 6pm
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10 speakers, merging, forever,
Genie Stuart is a producer and performer from Ngunnawal/Ngunawal/Ngambri Country. This live, durational performance takes Chetcuti's utopian paintings as a departure point for exploring how sound might construct a utopia within shared space. Found speakers and radios positioned throughout the space invite audiences to move through and within the work at their own pace. Woven through the work are frequencies — 174 Hz, 528 Hz, 432 Hz — each purportedly associated with somatic and restorative effects. Stuart uses live electronics and oboe to rehearse, through sound, an embodied utopia.
Lucy Chetcuti
Thought forms from the queer utopia imaginarium
August 6-29, 2026