Lesley Turnbull: The Invisible Lesbian

THURSday 8 JUNE 2023
5–7pm

SITE EIGHT Gallery
RMIT University, Building 2, Level 2, Room 8
Bowen Street, Melbourne

Enter via Rodda Lane for lift access

Lesley Turnbull PhD Examination Exhibition Evoking The Invisible Lesbian Through Creative Art Practice will be available for viewing at SITE EIGHT Gallery

The Invisible Lesbian explores photo-based praxis, performance, voice narration and sculpture to fearlessly investigate how marginalisation had shaped a personal narrative and a lived life. The project examines the complexities of my journey from being a “teenage tomboy” who survived “tomboy taming” to an adult lesbian in working class Edinburgh during the 1980s. It navigates personal and historical intersections through the articulation of a shifting identity towards awareness of gender identity and sexuality in a series of new artistic projects. I adopt persona in the guise of a teenage tomboy, who shape-shifts from boxer to hero to coming out through a fog of drunkenness and invisibility. In the process of evoking the invisible lesbian through creative practice, my PhD research culminates in an exhibition of the project’s new artworks, that reimagines and celebrates my lesbian (in)visibility, whilst seeking to contribute to queer contemporary art practice and research. 

—Lesley Turnbull

Image: Lesley Turnbull, Shard, 2020, black and white inkjet print on Archival Photo Rag paper, 10x8cm