Nottingham Contemporary

"We like our curation like our sexuality – ambiguous"
– Ridykeulous

From September 2023 to January 2024, Ridykeulous takes over all of Nottingham Contemporary’s spaces with Ridykes’ Cavern of Fine Inverted Wines and Deviant Videos, continuing the institution’s lineage of ambitious artist-curated exhibitions. Focused on queer and feminist art, Ridykeulous is a curatorial initiative led by the internationally renowned American artists Nicole Eisenman and A.L. Steiner, joined here by guest dyke Sam Roeck. Since Ridykeulous’ establishment in 2005, collaborative curatorial practice has formed an important – if under-recognised – part of their respective creative outputs.

Ridykes’ Cavern of Fine Inverted Wines and Deviant Videos features the work of over 30 “très gay” contemporary visual artists working across film, video installation, sculpture and performance. Within this deeply non-binaried proposition, Ridykeulous deploys their signature use of humour and subversion of language to critique the art world and heteropatriarchal culture at large. “Humour is not just a tool,” Ridykeulous explains, “it’s also a survival technique.” Playfully proposing queer fabulosity as a critical intervention in the capitalist spectacle, the exhibition seeks to erode the secondary positioning of LGBTQ+ art and artists as “alternative”.

This bold and spirited exhibition will take place across all four of Nottingham Contemporary’s large-scale gallery spaces (8,500 sq feet). Describing their selection as “eccentric and bizarre”, Ridykeulous assembles an intergenerational mix of artists, from pioneering figures such as Charles Atlas and My Barbarian to a younger generation of artists including Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Young Joon Kwak & Alli Miller, and Tabita Rezaire.

The exhibition will be punctuated by a series of live performance interventions, Anthromotivism (The Study of People Watching People Do Something) (2023) conceived by Ryan McNamara on the following dates:

Fri 22nd Sep - Two Classics Scholars Learning to Vogue

Fri 22nd Sep, 6.30-8pm - Four Funeral Directors Blowing Bubbles

Sat 21st Oct, 2-3pm - Two Fortune Tellers Singing Karaoke

Thurs 28 Sep - Three Fetishists Sharing Memories

Sat 2nd Dec, 2-3pm - Two Goths Reading Mark Twain

Weds 13th Dec, 3.30-4.30pm - Three Bisexuals Calling their Mums

Select feature film screenings will also take place in conjunction with the exhibition.

Ridykes’ Cavern of Fine Inverted Wines and Deviant Videos is Ridykeulous’ first institutional exhibition in Europe, and builds on the success of their 2021 video presentation at Hauser & Wirth, New York, entitled Ridykes’ Cavern of Fine Gay Wine and Videos: Hauser & Werk Bitch: Don’t Be Mad At Us!. It coincides with Nicole Eisenman’s forthcoming retrospective, What Happened, at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (11 October 2023 – 14 January 2024), co-organised with Museum Brandhorst, Munich.