Cross pose: body language against the grain

Cross Pose – Body language against the grain brings together Australian artworks from The University of Queensland Art Collection that draw on the human body as expressions of cross-cultural subjectivities and visual politics. The visual languages of the body in these artworks ‘pose’ questions, challenges, and interventions into normative thinking. We confront bodies generating ideas and emotions that are beyond the scope of words, and respond to sensory triggers aimed at realigning social attitudes and political thinking. The exhibition takes the measure of how artists map the social and political regulation of the body, and how individuals push back against this control. The selected artworks are predominantly by Indigenous Australians who draw on a life-long expertise in negotiating different cultures and languages to both declare and contest the status of subjectivity and identity. Cross Pose thus presents a rare occasion where non-Indigenous perspectives adopt the role of counterpoint in narratives about Australian cultures. Artists include Dave Hullfish Bailey + Sam Watson, Gordon Bennett, Michael Cook, Debbie Coombes, Ray Crooke, Robert Dowling, Mabel Edmunds, Samantha Hobson, Christopher Pease, Luke Roberts, and Darren Siwes