ABOUT THE KINGPINS

The Kingpins play with the gaps in and between with an infinite series of transgressive drag acts. Coming out of Sydney’s drag scene, the female foursome utilize an aesthetics of remixing, with elements taken from mainstream media, pop culture and art history, to comment on issues of gender, sex, public space, consumerism and corporate branding. Their performances play with music, video and costume, and are presented as public interventions, sometimes in the form of ‘surprise’ actions, as well as gallery installations with posters, projections and soundtracks. Humorous, spectacular, grotesque and colourful, their work engages the audience in a subversive politics of pleasure.

Manray Hsu, 2006

MYSTIC REHAB

Mystic Rehab is a performance originally commissioned by the Musée D’art Moderne Paris as part of the Playback exhibition and premiered for the opening night of the Museum show. Playback is a group exhibition of music videos directed by visual artists and videos inspired by the video clip format, curated by Anne Dressen.

GREAT UNDEAD

Solo exhibition at Kaliman Gallery, Sydney, 2007

Catalogue Essay by J. Jack Halberstram

HEIRONYMUS POSH

Project commissioned by 2006 Liverpool Biennale. Curated by Manray Hsu and Geraldo Mosquera.

Performance intervention at Port Sunlight, home of the Sunlight Soap factory, Liverpool, UK. Translated into a film clip in collaboration with The Amazing Phillip Sisters and unfolded into an installation at Polished T gallery.

Photographic stills and Rope Walkers stills by Liz Ham. www.lizham.com

WELCOME TO THE JINGLE

Project commissioned for Primavera 2003, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Curated by Julianne Pierce. A one night series of guerilla drag performance within 6 Sydney Starbucks locations. The intervention footage was then edited into 2 channel video installation set to an original techno death metal soundtrack.

Welcome to the Jingle was subsequently adapted for the 2004 Gwangju Biennale.

RHAPSODY HAPPENS

5 Channel video installation exhibited at Artspace Sydney, 2004 and Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, 2005. Catalogue essay by Phillip Brophy.

White Girls Cant Hump T-shirt costume collaboration with artist Richard Bell link
( http://www.kooriweb.org/bell/index.html )

Photographic stills : Liz Ham

DARKSIDE OF THE MALL

A magazine editorial photographic series of a performance intervention in a Shopping centre, electing the mall as a ready-made set for a B-grade ‘Cremaster’.

MENSCLUB VERSUS REMIX

Commissioned installation of three video clips and posters for the Taipei Biennale 2004. Curated by Barbara Vanderlinden. Video installation featuring: VERSUS (2002): collaboration with Leigh Bowery’s ‘Raw Sewage’, commissioned by Performance Space, Sydney. MENSCLUB (2002): clip for the band Tito Riviera and The Pearl Birds, THIS IS MY REMIX BABY (2001): The Kingpins first video clip of a drag boy band’s night on the town.

TAKE ME TO YOUR DEALER

Solo exhibition at Kaliman Gallery, Sydney 2005.

SYNTHIA

Single channel video and photographic work. Exhibited at Take Me To Your Dealer, Kaliman Gallery 2005. Photograph Liz Ham ( www.lizham.com )

LARDFINGER VS JAKE THE SHAKE

Performance at MJWF (Marrickville Jelly Wrestling Foundation) http://www.mjwf.org at the Turella Terrordome.

Musical production by Royalston.

Lardfinger and Jake the Shake portrait by Liz Ham.

TRIANGLES

The triangles project is an exercise in portraiture and place. It is a collaborative work built out of a series of workshops at Bronte Youth Centre Liverpool. The children were asked to construct their own characters by making collages from local Uk magazines such as Grazia, Ok, Hello publications.

These collages were used to art direct the photographic shoot where the child embodied the character in their chosen location.

This work is collaboration with local artist Beci Vippond and photographer Liz Ham. ( www.lizham.com)

AZARIA LIVES

Collaborative painting project with three cinema painting studios in Pondicherry, India, 2007. The series portrays Azaria Chamberlain, the baby girl taken by dingoes in central Australia in 1980, surviving in a parallel Kingpins universe to become Azaria: Queen of the Outback.

NUIT BLANCHE

12 hour performance installation commissioned for 2006 Nuit Blanche, Paris. Curated by Jerome Sans and Nicolas Bourriaud. THE GREAT UNDEAD performance was resurrected hourly within four rotating mirror-ball coffins, dead magnolia branches and smoke machines. It was set in a 1920’s portable ballroom and accompanied by live musicians The Amazing Phillips Sisters.

Photographic documentation Elisa Le Monnier

JACKSON POLLOCK CAR CRASH

Jackson Pollock Car Crash recreation featuring She Wolf and Moon Woman

THIS IS MY REMIX REHAB

This is my Remix, Baby is a document of a one-night performance that links Drag within the Sydney landscape. The Kingpins costumed as a boy band and drive in a convertible on the Sydney car culture cruise circuit from the City via Kings Cross and back to Bondi Beach. This circuit is synonymous with boys in cars and drag racing. Within “This is My Remix Baby” The Kingpins return the documentation footage back to a video clip format, set to the song “Sex Me”. The video work was installed with drawings made by a street side portrait artist.

EVIL DICK

Presented by KOLKOZ and performed on the steps of the Palais de Tokyo as part of Notre Histoire, 2006, the last exhibition of directors Jerome Sans and Nicolas Bourriaud.