Thine Shrine Divine was Commissioned for World Pride 2023 and included in Braving Time, curated by Richard Perram OAM and installed over 7 days in February 2023 in the foyer of the main Gallery of the National Art School (Sydney).  Rising two floor Thine Shrine Divine was confabulated out of 1,617 120 gsm A4 full colour photocopies (laser prints), various sculptural elements and blackboard arches on which visitors were invited to inscribe the names of their most consequent queer ancestors. These were collated every few days or when the niche was full and added to the list of names incanted by a polychromatic marble portrait bust of Antinous, the fabled lover of the emperor Hadrian.

Thine Shrine Divine was applied directly to the walls of the National Art School’s main gallery an 1814 wing on the Old Darlinghurst Jail.  It reimagined the materially and culturally white entrance void as a sumptuous temple façade.  Dedicated to the global queer communities esteemed ancestors the work commemorates non-biological genealogies. Queer ancestors are named and (re)claimed in a list incanted by Antinous (Died CE 130), the lover of Emperor Hadrian (CE 117 – 138). Initialised from names supplied by our friends it was augmented each week with new names provided by visitors to the exhibition.

 The stone textures were photographed in sites sacred to sections of the LGBTQIA+ community including the marble floor of Supervisor Harvey Milk’s office in the San Francisco City Hall (Milk was the first openly gay man elected to political office in the United States), the tomb of Oscar Wilde (Père La Chaise Cemetery, Paris), the monument to Sappho in Mytilene (Lesbos Greece) and the Babylon Sauna (Bangkok)