Kevin Gaffney: Expulsion

Exhibiting in Cork for the first time, artist-filmmaker Kevin Gaffney will premiere Expulsion in September. Shot in part at Crawford Art Gallery, Expulsion is a 30-minute film written and directed by Kevin, which moves between a fictional Queer State, archival footage of queer activists, a guided meditation to expunge internalised homophobia/transphobia, and nocturnal rituals. As the ideals of queerness in the state are confronted with the respectability politics of homonormativity and capitalism, the viewer is asked to reconsider each character’s motivations as they progress through ethically ambiguous scenes. Expulsion incorporates archival footage of Joan Jett Blakk, the drag persona of Terence Smith, who ran for mayor of Chicago in 1991 and for president in the USA in 1992 on the ticket of the Queer Nation party. Expulsion navigates queer history, from the witchcraft trials and the inquisition, to current debates around homonormativity and the co-opting of queerness by capitalism. The footage of Joan Jett Blakk’s rallies and speeches are full of hope and determination to imagine a better world for queer people, one which fails to fully materialise as the fictional queer state descends into bureaucracy.

Another 3-minute video work, Retelling: Dr. James Miranda Barry and John Joseph Danson, made in conjunction with Expulsion and filmed on location in the Crawford Art Gallery in response to the museum’s collection will also be premiered in the exhibition. Dr. James Barry was assigned female at birth but lived his entire adult life as a man. While the terminology didn’t exist at the time, today we would recognise him as being trans. About Dr. James Barry, Kevin says: “He is written about as if he was a woman who masqueraded as a man in order to achieve an education and career that was not accessible for women at the time. However, being inaccurately hailed as “Britain’s first female physician” ignores his transgender identity. Instead, he was the first trans physician.” The video work also critiques the institutional erasure of black historical figures. Dr. James Barry’s servant, John Joseph Danson, is prominent in one of only two known photos of Barry yet is often referred to only as “black John” in writings about Barry.

The exhibition will also feature Far from the Reach of the Sun—a film set in a near-future where a government-approved drug can alter your sexuality—reflecting on gay conversion therapy, the role of organized religion in Western society and internalized homophobia—and Dusting—in which a monotonous domestic task becomes the basis of a grotesque display of desire as the character licks years of dusting and dirt off the windows of an abandoned building.

Expulsion is the second exhibition in the artist-directed yearly programme “Platform,” which aims to support artists pursue their current research interests through a collaboration with the Crawford Art Gallery, its site, its collection and location.

About Crawford Art Gallery
Crawford Art Gallery is an Irish national cultural institution, dedicated to contemporary and historic visual art, located in a significant heritage building in the heart of Cork city. Home to a collection of national importance, it tells a compelling story of Cork and Ireland over the last three centuries, while also offering a vibrant and dynamic programme of temporary exhibitions. 

Originally built in 1724 as the city’s Custom House, the Gallery is home to the famous Canova Casts, gifted to Cork two centuries ago. Featured in the gallery’s collection of over 3,000 objects are well-known and much-loved works by Irish artists James Barry, Harry Clarke, Mainie Jellett, Seán Keating, Daniel Maclise, Norah McGuinness, Edith Somerville, and Jack B. Yeats, as well as contemporary artists Gerard Byrne, Maud Cotter, Dorothy Cross, Eilis O’Connell, and Hughie O’Donoghue.

Crawford Art Gallery media contacts:
Dyane Hanrahan, dyanehanrahan [​at​] crawfordartgallery.ie
T +353 (0) 21 4907856 M +353 (0) 86 8278151