Jez Dolan & Garth Gratrix: How do you make a Queer ritual?

How do you make a Queer ritual? presents an intriguing and critical inquiry into queerness and ritualistic practices and acts as a celebration of identity and an avenue for empowerment, healing, and belonging.  

​​​​What might be the considerations and principles that underpin the creation of queer rituals? The artists share a playful journey towards authenticity, consent, and cultural sensitivity.  This exhibition allows for individual readings, reflections and interpretations suggesting a space to hold Queer rituals that remains ever changing and evolving to the needs and desires of community.  It cultivates an inclusive space to shed societal burdens, and embrace vulnerability to create an environment of empathy, compassion, and understanding.  It acts as a proposal to consider what a Queer ritual could be, rather than asking audiences to take part in a pre-designed ritual.  The artists are experimenting with the idea, not defining the outcome.  

Over two days in late November, Jez and Garth will be collaborating with other Queer creatives across different art forms, to form a Queer Winter Congregation and respond to the idea of creating a live Queer ritual together in the Peter Scott Gallery.  All are welcome to come and share in their work-in-progress ritual-making on 22 November.

Jez Dolan is an artist living and working in Manchester.  His practice underlines the intersections between queerness, sexuality, identity, and memory.  He works across artforms including drawing, film, printmaking, painting, performance and theatre.

Garth Gratrix lives and works in Blackpool and is the founder of the Abingdon Studios.  Gratrix makes work centred around the idea of formal frolic, exploring space, relational aesthetics and dynamics that draw from queer lived experience and coastal peripherality.