Exhibition Opening: Confronting Femininity, Diggermode 2: Cloud Ceding, Funeral Parade of Roses

Celebrate the opening of the fourth and final quarter of the fiftieth-anniversary artistic program. The new shows navigate femininity in extremis; technocapitalism and First Nations worldviews; and the underground gay scene of 1960s Tokyo.

Joel Sherwood Spring
Diggermode 2: Cloud Ceding
Sherwood Spring returns to the Institute with his sequel Diggermode 2: Cloud Ceding. This video installation project combines documentary and narrative filmmaking, 3D-generated simulations, archival materials, and sculptural elements. The work revolves around Kira, a drone operator at RAAF Edinburgh, who has just bought a Defence Housing Australia house in Northwest Quarter Estate in Adelaide’s Angle Park. The work traverses soldier-settlement histories, land-title registration, lifestyle vlogging, data-centre real-estate monopolies, and how Australia’s strategic position in the Pacific secures future rare-earth extraction.

Confronting Femininity
Curated by Sal Edwards and Robert Leonard
Confronting Femininity showcases three Brisbane women artists of different generations who present femininity in extremis: Rosemary Laing (1959–2024), Natalya Hughes (1977–), and Michaela Stark (1994–). The works both confront familiar western conceptions of femininity and make femininity confronting.

Toshio Matsumoto
Funeral Parade of Roses
Loosely adapted from Oedipus Rex, Toshio Matsumoto’s new-wave feature film Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) explores the underground gay scene of 1960s Tokyo, with its divas and drag bars; sex, drugs, and mascara.