These two works are from a series that considered the challenges of fitting within the narrowly defined (largely heterosexual) margins of accepted male behaviour. Always alert to the possibilities of language, Grant Lingard combined pre-made ink stamps with familiar phrases he described as “having suitable political connotations for the gay debate”.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor combines the singsong rollcall of suitable male careers with the image of a black rose. For Grant, roses symbolised growth, passion and beauty, but in black they also represented an outsider or underdog, the family’s ‘black sheep’. He customised each frame, choosing colours that represented different roses. If the Shoe Fits is an image of tightly-laced conformity. Grant said he wanted to show that “sexuality is only one small part of a person’s makeup, and gay men are equally as varied and individual as non-gay. I just want to plant a seed in people’s head hoping it will grow and perhaps affect the way they think and behave.”

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

Classical Italian male sculptures are often missing a crucial part of their anatomy – not because of prudery, but because they were souvenired by admiring tourists. Here, a pile of plaster phalluses sits above a tap; a suitably dry commentary on the unending challenge of quenching sexual desires. Made in Sydney in the shadow of the HIV/AIDS crisis, these totems of liberated sexual expression were also associated with danger. In that context, a pile-up of body parts takes on a much darker symbolism.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- 21 July 2024)