In his first exhibition with Michael Reid Berlin, William Yang demonstrates his extraordinary artistic and cultural legacy. Comprised of fourteen key photographs spanning five decades, Yang’s titular exhibition is a curated assemblage of iconic and important works of social documentary. Lensed at the front lines of the parties, protests and performances through which LGBTQ+ identity, autonomy and politics came to be defined, Yang’s radically intimate, diaristic images are regarded as one of the most important social archives of the last 50 years. On view are a selection of photographs largely pulled from three seminal thematic exhibitions, Sydneyphiles, Bloodlinks and Friends of Dorothy.
Visitors to Yang’s first Michael Reid Berlin show will recognise among his subjects some of the most important and influential figures in the story of recent art and culture, including Pina Bausch, Jenny Kee, Linda Jackson, Brett Whiteley and Cate Blanchett. These creative cynosures appear alongside less familiar faces who have nonetheless loomed large in the artist’s own story, and as the stars of his most iconic and indelible images. In John’s Bedroom, 1980, Yang captures a young man named Allan hunched coyly in the bedroom of a popular Surry Hills gay hangout. Allan would later become the subject of William Yang’s masterpiece, Allan, which documents the ravages of the AIDS virus with dignity and tenderness.
On two occasions Yang’s own likeness appears in this exhibition, Self Portrait #2, 1947/2008 and William in Scholars Costume, 1984/2009, two principal images in the artists oeuvre. Displayed chronologically, these photographs unpack Yang’s Chinese-Australian identity, illustrating his experience of having to “come out” twice.
Propelling his works rich capacity for storytelling are handwritten notes, journalistic recollections scrawled across the surface of his photographic images. These wonderfully insightful visual devices reanimate Yang’s subjects, offering intimate reflections on how the pictures came to be.
For more information regarding photographs available to acquire, please contact colinesoria@michaelreid.com.au
