Out to Space

A rainbow flag of a boat flying with Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House in the background.

Another major event of Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival and the last key party before the final Mardi Gras Dance Party rolls in, Mardi Gras Harbour Party, Sol Y Luna.

The simple concept is just having fun while watching sunset in Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens with Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House in the background. Moreover, it is special this year when two cruise liners, Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth 2, rendezvous. And this is the last time that QE2 cruises in the Harbour before her retirement.

George Bush impersonation at Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade 2007

It is my little dream comes true to have my works exhibited at Australian Centre for Photography even though it is just a part of the slide show of Mardi Gras: the Slide Show last year. Quote from the press release:

Last Mardi Gras season, a group of budding photographers drawn from Sydney College of the Arts and the Sydney Photobloggers group (who reside at flickr.com) were brought together by Robert McGrath of MG Photographic with the aim of capturing the originality and exuberance of Sydney’s Mardi Gras season.

Morgan Carpenter says that my photos have changed over the year. It is essential to explore retrospectively on your own works to see how it has shaped in a period of time. This small exhibition gives me a chance to look back at myself and I start having a flashback.

Late 2006 I suffered from a drawback feeling. Things went not too well on the year for all sorts of reasons. And I found that that my photography was stale, especially in the contents. So I decided to have a theme to focus on. The idea was to capture Sydney’s diversity through its community events and celebrations.

I was looking at Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras to kick off the concept. Fortunately, Mardi Gras: the Slide Show was looking for a handful of photographers via Sydney Photobloggers Group for the project. My Fair Day series impressed the producer, Robert McGrath and got me in.

Best of all, this art project gave the photographers their own space to express the creativities. The event pushed my limits technically and creatively as I tried to approach it different ways from what I saw Mardi Gras photographs and from my own comfort zone. The day after I was still exhausted mentally and physically. The award from the project was just an extra, the experience that I could share to the larger audience and got me this far was the real deal.

Damien Eames, Head of Brand and Creative Strategy at Mardi Gras says.

For the first time I feel we have a body of work that can convey the complex magic of Mardi Gras to those who’ve never experienced it directly.

The Slide Show is presented at Video Lounge, Australian Centre for Photography until 8 March.

Fair Day is one of the key events of Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. It is actually the most inclusive and diverse program of the festival. Kids run around with their straight and gay parents. Dogs sniff and play with others. Friends and families drink and BBQ together while watching stage entertainments. Dressed-up queens gracefully glide to demonstrate their pride of beauty. Half-naked men and, sometime, women lie on the ground, flirt with each others and finally end up on the dance floor.

Although it does not sound different from previous years, essentially, this social event is for the people to hang around in Victoria Park for a picnic as one community once a year.

Another the City of Sydney’s selling point of parties is Chinese New Year Festival, the largest outside Asia, they claim. Although the city does not have to try hard to reflect its multiculturalism, Chinese New Year Festival, which runs 1-24 February, is the biggest push to showcase the vibrant cultures of ethnic minorities. The parade is full of colourful oriental glitz and glamour and noisy drumbeat without firecrackers because of safety issues. The crowd is loving it. The streets are cleared almost immediately as if it never happened. Welcome to Chinese year of the rat, Sydney style.

Crowd watching Mardi Gras 2008 Launch.

Sydney’s Gay & Lesbian tourist season has officially popped. The Launch is moved from Moore Park to The Supper Club, Oxford Street because of the wet weather. Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras turns 30 this year. It has been significant ride for the community since the first Stonewall riots commemoration on 24 June 1978 in Sydney. Now it becomes one of the city’s major carnivals and draws people from around the world to see freaks. “Brave New World” says this year concept. It sounds pretty, eh?

Ron Austin giving an interview to a press while a drag queen posing for cameras.

The hi-light for me would be Ron Austin, who was in the very first marching for homosexuality rights in Australia. It was not easy to be a queer back then. It was wrong, sick, immoral and illegal. Today, it does not seem to matter any more, in modern first worlds at least, whether who you are: straight, gay, lesbian, Asian, Black, White, Hispanic or Irish. Nonetheless, the world is full of differences, still. Can we harmoniously live with each other or just put up with it? Have we forgot or taken everything for granted? Asking too many questions in the celebration is unhealthy, just dance on it and those problems will go away. Brave new world, indeed.