Cr.image by Suzanne Phoenix
"SOULS" is a vibrant visual art exhibition showcasing the work of LGBTIQA+ artists and communities. Each artist brings their own unique technique and vision ranging from painting, photography, sculpture, and digital media to performance and installation. Together, these diverse practices celebrate identity, resilience, and connection, illuminating the richness of queer experience through creativity, personal expression, and the shared spirit that unites and empowers us all.
Albert Koomen
These four works are animal representations of the gay Bear community. There are two bears - frequently used as visual totems by their human namesakes, and two tigers - the bright distractions which mean you don’t notice the actual blokey bears right next to you.
Albert Koomen is an artist and filmmaker with a focus on exploring the many different facets of the Bear community. His extensive professional career includes more than 20 years as director and producer with the ABC. Over the years, he has had several exhibitions and his short films have featured in Australian and international festivals - including this year’s Melbourne Queer Film Festival.
Alistair Fowler
Alistair Fowler (he/him) is an award-winning artist working between Melbourne/Naarm and the Daylesford Macedon Ranges on Wurundjeri and Dja Dja Wurrung Country. Inspired by his deep connection to the natural world, his work explores the fragility and patchwork nature of the human condition with a sense of play and emotional familiarity.
With a background in building and antique conservation, Fowler brings a meticulous craftsmanship to his fantastical creatures, distinctive glaze finishes, and inventive forms. Working primarily in ceramic sculpture alongside drawing, painting, and woodwork, he often incorporates upcycled and found materials. His practice also highlights issues affecting marginalised communities, the climate crisis, and endangered species.
Ivan Sun
Ivan Sun is a multimedia artist whose work has been exhibited in venues from St Kilda to San Diego. In 2025, his short films (animated music videos and documentaries about the creative life) have been selected for festivals in London, Chicago, Canberra and Melbourne.
Ivan's recent work includes the Golden Dragon Museum's House of Loong, an interactive digital museum installation that showcases his unique set of 3d animation, film production and app development skills. He also developed and curated five exhibitions and performance events as part of Bendigo Tourism's promotional campaign celebrating the Frida Kahlo blockbuster exhibition. Ivan's works blended cultural engagement with strategic community programming.
Jean-Luc Syndikas
Jean-Luc Syndikas is an Australian-born artist working across drawing, photography, and film. His work has been exhibited internationally, including group shows in Melbourne, New York, and Pingyao, China. In 2024, he presented his debut solo exhibition 'Drrty Grlz + Prrty Boyz' at SOL Gallery, which attracted a wide and enthusiastic audience. Beyond his art, Jean-Luc curates and leads innovative life drawing experiences such as Top Secret Life Drawing, a cinematic, body-positive exploration of movement, identity, and form. Influenced by Surrealist art and film, his recent work investigates the theme of ‘journeys,’ crafting evocative visual narratives that invite viewers into dreamlike, introspective worlds.
Jess Angwin
Jess Angwin works in Melbourne and creates art that explores themes of gender, identity, memory, and marginalisation — often through intimate, time-intensive techniques such as cross-stitch, sewing, and textile-based processes.
Her practice frequently draws on personal and collective histories, and aims to reclaim or re-imagine narratives around gender and belonging.
Kate Galea
Kate Galea, originally from London, made Sydney her home in 2011 and now she and her wife reside in the vibrant neighbourhood of Redfern.
Her work is defined by the use of sharp, deliberate edges that shape abstract compositions where bold lines and geometric forms take centre stage. Drawing inspiration from overlooked spaces and the subtle rhythm of repetitive patterns she brings a sense of structure and intentionality to her paintings.
While Kate strives for near-perfect balance in her work, she is equally committed to ensuring that the human touch remains evident - asserting thather art is crafted by hand and paint, not by computer or AI. Through this process she seeks to establish a distinct connection between the viewer and the tactile, intricate nature of her creations. Her paintings can be appreciated at face value but ask the viewer for a second and third look finding new lines, colours and pattern combinations each time.
Marcus O'Donnell
‘These bodies are wild and shimmering’
The installation plays with the covering and uncovering of the saint’s body and the collision of the erotic and ecstatic in Christian iconography. Saints have always been active images –used to vividly imagine sacred narratives, to awaken emotions of love and devotion. However, the role of beauty, the body and the sensuous in this process is complex. In the history of art, we witness a desire to tread what Maya Corry calls the “line between licit and illicit loveliness,” which she acknowledges “was often so thin as to be indistinguishable”. Corry also shows that the will to embrace and navigate this dialectic was strong, which is why the history of art is filled with comely saints. So, to actively rework saintly imagery, to try to construct new meaning from these historic patterns, is to participate in this long tradition of calling sensuous mystery into our lives in and through bodies.
Marcus O’Donnell is an artist, writer and academic. His hybrid traditional-digital prints explore pattern, chaos and complexity at the intersection of bodies, sexuality, and landscape. He was awarded 2nd prize in the Jack Wilkins Experimental Photography Prize (2022); was a finalist in Milburn Prize (2023); Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize (2023) and Olive Cotton Award (2023). He has exhibited at Woolwich Print Fair London (2024 & 2025) and Sydney Contemporary (2024 & 2025). He is a member of Baldessin Press Committee of Management.
Mr Dimples
Mr Dimples artwork has always grown from genuine emotion, whether happiness, anger, or frustration. His art style first emerged in the summer of 2012 after a series of unsettling intruder incidents that caused many sleepless nights. Influenced by the styles of Tim Burton and Frida Kahlo, the artist began creating his first “Mr Dimples” works as a way to cope. What started as a response to fear soon became a form of personal therapy.
Since then, Mr Dimples has continued to develop this distinctive visual style, using bold, iconic characters to express the everyday frustrations and experiences of life: friendship, work, social media, technology, dating, and queer identity. Each artwork becomes a story, inspired by real events or people.
Alongside his art practice, Mr Dimples is the curator of the Queer Country exhibition for the Bendigo Pride Festival and currently serves as President of Bendigo Artists Incorporated.
Ryan Pola
Ryan Pola is a Melbourne-based drawing and portrait artist, as well as an educator. He holds a Bachelor of Visual Art and a Bachelor of Secondary Education, and currently works full-time as a secondary school teacher, developing his art practice in the early hours of the morning and late into the night.
Working primarily in graphite, Pola creates detailed portraits that explore nature, identity, and the complexities of inner experience. His drawings merge realism with symbolic and emotional depth, often incorporating mythological elements or natural motifs to enrich his figurative work. Pola has exhibited widely across Australia and internationally. In 2022, he received both the Southern Buoy Portrait Prize and the Rainbow Award as part of the Biblio Art Prize.
Shane McGowan
Shane McGowan’s current mixed media drawings address the ambiguity of memory and ask can we ever be a reliable witness to our own past. This series ‘One Shot’ derives from a single ‘point and shoot’ photo he took of his husband in Times Square in the 90’s. Shane was interested to see how comprehensively he could dissect one small image to create a fractured moment in time.
Suzanne Phoenix
In 2013, I started documenting my queer Naarm community through photography. It was a way for me to connect and feel part of the community. I returned each year to LGBTIQA+ events including Pride March, Midsumma Carnival and Victoria’s Pride Street Party. Along with festivals like Gaytimes, protests for Marriage Equality and ral SlutWalk. For the first time I am exhibiting a collection from this vast series.’ - Suzanne Phoenix.
Suzanne Phoenix is a Naarm/Melbourne queer photographer, artist, book maker and publisher based in the Yarra Valley. Photos punctuate her life through portraits, performance, music, the street, and daily life. Suzanne has been recognised in many industry awards including National Photographic Portrait Prize, the Martin Kantor Portrait Prize and the Australian Women in Music Awards for Music Photographer in 2025.
Wendy Yong
Wendy Yong (Not.So.Glamorous) brings a new set of work that encompasses a new stage in life that highlights 'POP!' With the usual scummy pink flare that embodies the depth of their soul. Step into chaos that is packaged up in the simplicity of high contrast in the new series - "SCUM POP!".