Events

Image: Daniel John Corbett Sanders, Industry Shareholders, watercolour on plasterboard, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.

Back dirt is the dirt that is put to one side in the process of an archaeological dig.

It might be refiltered later for material fragments, or just returned to fill up the hole. Another reading could relate to the human body and the residues that it accumulates: gunge, gunk, dreg. The exhibition title draws on both these sets of associations, proposing a space for queerness that is in-process, multiple, and resists commodification.

Works by Daniel John Corbett Sanders and Priscilla Rose Howe register joy, discomfort, appetite, anger.

Collectively, they suggest that in the backdirt—that which is often put aside, repressed, or sanitised as a form of pink-washing—lies a depth of queer narrative.