After a tour around Scotland, Shaper/Caper is delighted to be returning to our hometown of Dundee to present Queer & Now, inspired by and touring alongside our award-winning immersive dance theatre show, Small Town Boys, about the AIDs crisis and queer people's journey from joy to tragedy, and a hopeful future.

As part of the exhibition, we will be hosting a Spotlight event alongside a drinks reception to allow our artists the opportunity to discuss their work, and put queer art to the forefront during LGBT+ History Month.

Queer & Now includes 10 Queer Artists, who were commissioned by Shaper/Caper to explore the queer experience from the 1980s right through to modern day.

Queer & Now is curated by Thomas Small, designed by Fraser Lappin, with music by Mark Franks from the platinum-selling band The Overtones.

This project is supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Promotional artwork by AJ Duncan

Meet the Artists

Alex Hayward (He/Him/They) Originally from Devon, Alex moved to Edinburgh in 2016 to partake in the BA Painting programme at Edinburgh College of Art.

He magpies across television, photography, books, architecture, film, theatre, and beyond to find what shines. His degree show explored queer desire and longing through the ballet; which led him to collaborate with renowned choreographer Sir Matthew Bourne and his company ‘New Adventures’.

He has exhibited across the UK, including four times at the Royal Scottish Academy, and had work acquired by the University of Edinburgh’s Art Collection. They were recently invited by Perth Museum to install a new work exploring living rurally as an LGBTQ+ person in Scotland, as part of their exhibition ‘Unicorn’.

More recently his practice has focused on the urban-rural dichotomy, and how those environments impact what it means to be socially, culturally, politically, and sexually queer.

AJ Duncan(She/Her) AJ is a Glasgow-based artist who predominantly creates feminist illustrations centred around the everyday experiences of women and non-binary folk. Her work typically depicts narrative scenes, simply hanging out at home or at the bar. Representation is particularly important to her practice – her work strives to make all intersections of women and queer folk feel seen, particularly in the visual arts where certain intersections such as disability and differing body types are often underrepresented.

Brian Evans (He/Him) Brian is an actor and writer from Glasgow. He gained a first-class honours degree in Drama and Performance from Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, in 2021. Since then, he has garnered success by contributing to multiple award-winning theatre productions, including performing in Ode to Joy (How Gordon got to go to the nasty pig party) at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2022.

He has recently been longlisted for A Play, A Pie and A Pint’s prestigious David MacLennan Award for his writing. He is passionate about creating and sharing queer stories and narratives through the medium of playwriting and performance. Brian is excited to be a part of the Queer & Now Programme with Shaper Caper to develop his writing skills further and foster connections within the queer arts community through his writing.

Ross Whyte (He/Him) Ross Whyte is a Glasgow-based composer, sound artist and arranger. In 2012 he completed a practice-based PhD in Musical Composition at the University of Aberdeen where his field research was concerned with impermanence in audio-visual inter-media and headphone specific composition.

His compositional output often includes collaborations with artists of disciplines different to his own, including dance, theatre, film and the digital arts. He has released three albums as part of Gaelic ambient electronica duet WHYTE (with singer-songwriter Alasdair Whyte). The duo was awarded the art and culture trophy at the 2019 Scottish Gaelic Awards.

Ross currently performs with the band A New International. He has recently received commissions from BBC Alba, Sound Festival, Tron Theatre, Theatre Gu Leòr, National Theatre of Scotland, Art Walk Porty Festival and Ceòl is Craic. Ross’ new solo album, Provenance, is coming out soon.

Nina Scott(They/Them)

Nina is a queer, working class political theatre maker & musician who has recently moved to Glasgow. Their practice often merges queer methodologies, verbatim, choral music, elaborate set design & performance. They are also an experienced facilitator & guest lecturer in Theatre for Social Change at Rose Bruford Drama School (London) & Creative Tools for Social Change at ULEX (Catalunia).

They were part of queer choral collective F*Choir for 6 years & have co-written & directed three musicals. Be More Mushroom (Ongoing) is a raucous, educational story for ages 8+ about what Fungi can teach us about queer identities. Land of the Three Towers: Vol 1 & 2 (2016-2019) were two verbatim musicals performed at Camden Peoples Theatre and 6 London housing states resisting social cleansing. They shared tools for resistance between housing campaigns. They are now interested in developing their queer songwriting methodology, which uses real words to co-create choral songs.

ACCESSIBILITY

Hapworks_00 is located at 7 Castle Street, Dundee, DD1 3AA. It has step free access from the street and a double door entrance which is not automatic. The interior space is all on one level, open plan and there is an accessible toilet.

The space can be reached by public transport; a 2 minute walk from the nearest bus stop and a 7 minute walk from Dundee Train Station. Space for bikes is available on Castle Street, and several car parks are close by. A limited number of short term parking spaces are available on Castle Street.

If you would like more information or have access needs you would like us to know about ahead of your visit, please contact Hapworks_00 at eilish@creativedundee.com

Registrations are closed

Shaper/Caper's Queer & Now: Spotlight Event (+ Drinks Reception)