Iridescent by Gerwyn Davies

In the exhibition Iridescent by Gerwyn Davies, queer photographic artist and costume maker Gerwyn Davies responds to and reimagines the museums, archives, historic houses and gardens under the care of Sydney Living Museums and NSW State Archives.

In a series of 12 large-scale photographic works, Davies dramatically transforms each property into a stage on which an extravagant performance is played out for the camera by the artist as a vividly costumed character.

Rather than recount the familiar histories of these properties, Davies draws out and reinterprets the whispers and fragments of their lesser-known stories. Costume and camera are used to conjure a range of fantastic figures, each one celebrating subplots and embellishing inferences scribbled in the margins of these site’s official histories.

At the Museum of Sydney, Davies’s costumes were displayed alongside his photographic works for the first time.