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.
@albear_art
Alistair Fowler
Alistair Fowler (he/him) is an award-winning artist based across Melbourne Naarm and the Daylesford Macedon Ranges region, on Wurundjeri and Dja Dja Wurrung Country, respectfully. Inspired by the natural world, his work explores the fragility and patchwork nature of the human condition, evoking familiarity with a sense of play. Working across ceramics, drawing, painting, and woodwork, Alistair creates enigmatic and inventive ceramic creatures and distinctive glaze finishes, often incorporating upcycled and found materials. His practice centres on ceramic sculpture, reflecting his background in building and antique conservation and a meticulous attention to detail.
Alistair’s imagery has been used in professional learning and conference contexts that focus on emotion-centred and relational approaches in psychology and therapeutic practice, supporting dialogue around gender, sexuality, and queer lived experience. His work is referred to nationally and internationally and is held in private collections across Australia, Europe, and Asia, as well as in public and institutional collections including Maroondah City Council, St Kevin’s College Toorak, the Victorian State Library, and Commissioner Ball, the Victorian Commissioner for LGBTIQA+ Communities.
@alistair_fowler
Ivan Sun
The Dragon and The Mouse is a series of self-portraits made in the presence of the world’s oldest intact Chinese processional dragon, Loong, now in the care of the Golden Dragon Museum in Bendigo.
The title alludes to the mythical and astrological relationship between the mighty dragon and the small mouse (of which I am one, according to Chinese astrology). The appended subtitle Beauty, Wisdom and Power refers to the attributes of the dragon that I symbolically take on through proximity and reflection.
Through a series of life adventures, I found myself in Bendigo with the opportunity to produce a documentary film and an interactive museum app about Loong and other processional dragons. These photographs form part of my personal collection, created to mark the completion of that project. Accompanying the self-portrait is a rendering of the 3D model developed for the app, Loong Reclined.
@1vansun
Jean-Luc Syndikas and Cain Cooper
Conjuring Demons is an expression piece where artist and muse dissolve into one another. When Jean-Luc and Cain met, sharing a casual afternoon, roles shifted fluidly. Artist and model worked side by side, without expectation or fixed outcome. The process was intuitive, mutual, and equal. Within collaboration, “Conjuring Demons” becomes an act of invitation, calling forth lived experiences shaped by desire, identity, memory, and self-discovery. In an era where AI blurs the boundaries of digital creation, this work reasserts art as a human exchange, a merging of presence, intuition, and soul.
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.
Cain Cooper (Cain9ine) is a Sydney-based photographer, creative consultant, and life model who crafts authentic stories through still and moving images. With over 20 years of experience, his practice spans high-profile commercial and healthcare projects, cultural events including the Eurovision Song Contest, and intimate nude portraiture. Rooted in a lifelong fascination with genuine human connection, traced back to his childhood photographs, Cain expanded into life modelling and drawing in 2025, embracing a holistic, collaborative exploration of the body as art and storytelling.
@jlsyndikasart @cain9ine
Jess Angwin
'You Are Beautiful' is a series of nine process screen prints on paper made by hand over several months. The imagery interprets photographic compositions of graffiti documented by the artist in April 2025 inside 924 Gilman, a historic punk club and queer community hub in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Jess Angwin is a Melbourne based visual artist working across art forms. Their practice draws on personal and collective histories, and aims to reclaim or re-imagine narratives around gender and belonging.
@jesssssssssah
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.
@Kate.galea.art
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.
@marcusod
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.
@mrdimples74
Ryan Pola
Ryan Pola is an artist interested in exploring mythologies and history within his drawings. Recently, his practice has been exploring different ways to engage with graphite as a drawing medium. The words take a water-like quality as graphite is combined with water as it is layered and masked in a process of pushing and pulling the artwork from the paper.
@ryanpola
Sam Hardy
Winner of the 2019 Grand Prize and the 2025 People’s Choice for The Laird’s Men on Men along with appearing on Nine’s LEGO Masters.
Their work draws from a diverse and vibrant pallet utilising the application of LEGO bricks, digitally and physically.
Exploring concepts of masculinity, identity, and Australian culture within the LGBTIQ+ community via motifs found in pop art and gay culture, specifically the classic Leatherman loo.
The pieces created aim to combine two gay stereotypical mediums to ask questions about why they are viewed as such as their existence today. The use of LEGO bricks touches on nostalgia as people see recognisable objects of their youth transformed into objects familiar in adulthood.
@Ranga_Bricks
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.
@shanemcgowanart
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.
@photospunctuatemylife
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!".
@not.so.glamorous
