Tassie let’s party: Mona launches The Tasmanian Queer Woodchop Championships via Glue Society
Mona (Museum of Old and New Art) has launched a new campaign with The Glue Society and Revolver, aimed at attracting WorldPride attendees to celebrate Pride in Tasmania.
Mona Foma, in partnership with Tourism Tasmania, presents The Tasmanian Queer Woodchop Championships—featuring a live artwork by Pony Express—on Friday 24 February.
In celebration of WorldPride, visitors are invited to Mona’s Tennis Court, for free, to witness the fastest growing queer timber-splitting-based sport in action. Only in Tassie, the classic form of the once male-dominated woodchopping competition will meet joyous queerness in a spectacle of flying wood and fabulousness. Afterwards, visitors can continue the festivities at the Mona Sessions, featuring pop-provocateur Peaches, and the aptly named afterparty—The Party.
The Queer Woodchop is what happens when you fuse LGBTQIA+ artists with a traditionally heteronormative sporting activity. Produced by experimental performance duo Pony Express, the artwork will involve performers and timbersports athletes battling it out on a subverted agricultural show ring. The Queer Woodchop plays on best-in-show country fair camp, and includes commentators, showbags and DJs. It is a tongue-in-cheek event that combines Agfest with nightclub, softening the line between rural tradition and radical queer performance practice.
Pony Express—Ian Sinclair and Loren Kronemyer—work across multiple mediums, creating pieces that reflect themes of queer politics, adaptation and experimentation. Their art has been presented in an array of traditional and non-traditional venues, where they work with communities, organisations and subcultures. The duo have explored environmentalism and physical love for (and with) nature and with The Queer Woodchop they ask; can you love nature while going at it with an axe?
Through this new work, Pony Express unpack the multiple meanings of ‘strength’ and the variety of flamboyant and conceptual ‘muscles’ needed in art and athletic achievement. Sinclair, from New South Wales, and Kronemyer, from lutruwita / Tasmania, say: ‘There’s both an inherent campness and conservativeness to this contest. The Queer Woodchop aims to hack away these lumbered binaries, progressing and radicalising the sport towards queered artform status while celebrating its past and present champions, legends and stories.’
Says Sarah Clark, CEO, Tourism Tasmania: “Tasmania is the perfect place where art, woodchopping and queer inclusivity can spectacularly collide. The Tasmanian Queer Woodchop Championships is an exciting artistic event made by members of the queer community, happily coinciding with the WorldPride festival in Australia for the first time. Tourism Tasmania is delighted to partner with Mona Foma to support this artwork and provide a compelling excuse for festival-goers to visit the state.”
Competitive woodchopping originated in 1870s lutruwita / Tasmania—as legend has it—as a method for resolving disputes between two axemen. Australia has since gone on to be world-leading in the woodchop arena (The Chopperoos are the most internationally celebrated team ever and Tasmanian icon David Foster is officially Australia’s most successful athlete). As a community spectacle, timber-sports has always drawn a crowd—and with this project Pony Express aims to find a third space between the Lumberjacks and Lumberjills, queering ‘C’mon Aussie C’mon’ values.
Mona Foma punters in Launceston also have the opportunity to witness The Queer Woodchop, with the artists performing as part of the Fantastic Futures exhibition—curated by Emma Pike—in the quadrangle of an old technical college from 5.15pm daily.
Championing queer and rural festivity and community togetherness, The Queer Woodchop takes place on Friday 24 February at 3.30pm on the Mona Tennis Court, prior to the evening’s Mona Sessions, featuring Peaches—followed by The Party in the depths of the Old Mercury Building.
More information on the Mona Foma website: https://monafoma.net.au/the-queer-woodchop
Museum of Old and New Art (Mona)
Director of Marketing and Communications: Robbie Brammall
Head of Creative: Jardin Anderson
Senior Photographer/Videographer: Jesse Hunniford
Assistant Photographer/Videographer: Jacob Collings
Finished Art: Jordan Cowen
Head of Partnerships/Project Lead: Angelique Brcic
Senior Curator: Emma Pike
Social Media Manager: Bridget McKernan
Senior Marketing Manager: Daniel Aitken
Pony Express
Artist: Loren Kronemyer
Artist: Ian Sinclair
Tourism Tasmania
Head of Content: Tim Cheng
Consumer Marketing Relations Manager: Liza-Jane Sowden
Paid Media Manager: Tom Sherson
The Glue Society/Revolver
Director: Pete Baker
Director of Photography: Jordan Maddocks
Producer: Cathy Rechichi
Assistant Director: Jose Marquina
Second Unit: Kate Cornish
Art Department: Lexi Laphor
Costume Supervisor: Al Joel
Costume & Standby: Willow Darling
Make-up/Hair: Afton Radojicic
Editor: Luke Crethar
Grade: Scott MacLean
Music: Scorpio Loon, Addicted To You
23 Comments
Crazy good. Film art to the highest Glue standards with a wonderful brief. Open goal really. Congrats to all involved.
Nice one Jardin… can see your mittens all over this
Yes Jords! Absolute fire.
are so far from hitting the mark at the moment
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
Enjoyed the kx billboard. Nice to see something that’s not rainbow.
As a piece of film, I love it.
As a message, I don’t.
How can we make treating all people the same, regardless of their sexuality, if we
continue to call the LGBTQIA+ communities Queer and differentiate them by their
sexuality?
I couldn’t care less what a person’s sexuality is, but I do know if I described a work
colleague as ‘Queer’ I’d soon be asked to seek ‘opportunities elsewhere’.
I’ll speak in pretty general terms, but hopefully it’s helpful.
– “Queer” isn’t really a sexuality as such, think of it as an identity.
– and as such “We” don’t call people queer. People identify as queer. I mean that figuratively, you can call ppl queer. It’s not a crime.
– if you don’t want to get fired, try this nuance: “John identifies as queer” versus “John’s a queer”
– I’m a gay man. And I identify as gay and queer.
– “Treating everyone the same” through the eyes of the law and with regard to human rights shouldn’t be confused with a sort of homogenisation of individuality or identity. We don’t all aspire to “be” the same.
– There’s obviously a big distinction between a celebration of difference and a persecution of difference. I’d suggest this is attempting the former.
You’re obviously free to critique/hate on/love the work how you choose, but as an observer I thought these thoughts might be constructive.
Dear Hey @ hope,
Thanks for that. I get it now. And thank you for treating my comments in the spirit they were written.
In fact, it’s beautiful. Casting , music, execution perfect. But I always expect MONA to do something surprising and unexpected. Queer Wood chopping is probably enough. Such a five star idea! But just wanted more than a mini music video. That said, it’s the best mini music video so far this year.
Are you queer? Seems like the artists who made this ‘queer woodchop’ are and they don’t seem too phased by the term if that’s what they’ve chosen to use. All that matters really.
Like I said, I don’t care what a person’s sexuality is.
I’m simply asking:
Does the word Queer help breakdown sexual identity stereotypes or enshrine them?
Are people who identify as Queer happy to be addressed as such by those who don’t identify as Queer?
Because I don’t know. Maybe you do?
You need to stop gatekeeping the term queer on a forum for an event made by queers telling others not to use the word queer when you clearly aren’t queer.
What you are doing is the exact type of cishet normative BS we are trying to get rid of.
…and I’m here for it
Coincidentally, I was watching the World Woodchopping Championships on TV at the pub this afternoon.
If you amped up the mood lighting, it would be difficult to tell it from the Mona video, except the competitors look more Bear-like.
Timing could be an issue though.
Good luck attracting Pride folk to Tassie the day before the Mardi Gras parade.
Might be wrong to say, but I’m just feeling a bit queered out right now, rather than being so so creative, it all seems a bit same same same
Nail on head. It’s a trap, but what do you ‘move on’ to when the culture doesn’t really believe anything? Anyhooo of all the same/same work around the last couple of months I like. Nice craft yes but also it doesn’t seem to really be selling anything apart from a queer artwork and big gay party (and Tazzie by association?). Better than telcos and petrol. Feels less exploitative giving gay artists the platform, even if the art in and of itself is a bit eyerolly.
Rechici did good. x
Queer woodchopping. And we see queer folk woodchopping, where’s the idea?
Idea? It’s art sweety, not advertising.
Don’t need an idea, it’s just an out there event that very few people know about and lends itself to some very interesting visuals. Well done to all involved.
If you’re all queered out, maybe have a weekend off, at home, or visit mum and dad. Recharge.
Nice work Commies and Glue.