Come Closer... Sex and Pleasure: Vivid Art After Hours

Wednesday 13 June: Come closer…a revealing look at sex and pleasure

Over three successive Wednesdays, Vivid Sydney takes over the gallery to create an intimate portrait of our better selves. Tonight, it’s time to talk about sex. Let’s go under the covers to explore female sexuality and the role of pleasure. Linger after all the intellectual stimulation for drinks and live music. While you’re here, catch the Archibald Prize — a snapshot of the people who are important to us and capture our imaginations.

5.30-6pm
Vivid presents: Exhibition talk: Hold Still

Curator Isobel Parker Philip invites you to look at the new exhibition Hold still: the photographic performance, which examines the way a camera turns any subject into a performer and any scenario into a theatrical act. Isobel will discuss, among other things, the sexual politics of the pose and the way conventional gestures objectify and sexualise the female body. If the camera choreographs its subject, how are contemporary artists subverting this power dynamic?
Modern Australian galleries. 

6.30pm-7pm
Vivid presents: Conversation: What I want to tell you about sex

Hear how technology is playing a positive part in sexuality — and no, we don’t just mean porn. VICE Editor Wendy Syfret shares surprising insights into young people’s attitudes to sex and marriage. The Indigo Project’s sex educator Georgia Grace dares us to up the pleasure factor in your everyday life. This is the fun, safe, sex education you never received at school. 

VICE Media Australia’s Wendy Syfret gives us a sneak peek into the girl’s locker room and asks why many of them are having less sex than their parents. She wants to know why marriage is still popular, what motivates young women now and finds out — if they are not having sex — what tickles their fancy.

The Indigo Project’s Georgia Grace is a sex educator and intimacy coach who wants you to discover more pleasure, both inside and outside the bedroom. Georgia unravels the anatomy of female sensuality, sexuality and the ownership of pleasure. She shares her top tricks and tools to help you get back in touch with your body, desires and what takes you to that edge. This is a chance to let go of fear and shame so you can enjoy sex to connect, converse and express yourself.
Entrance Court.

7.30 - 8.30pm
Vivid presents: Live music: Haiku Hands

Haiku Hands have a whole lot of attitude — individually bossy, collectively strong. Ringleaders Beatrice Lewis, Claire Nakazawa and Mie Nakazawa curate Haiku Hands collaborating with some of Australia's finest singers, writers and producers to perform genre-bending unconventional pop, dance, electronic magic.

Hailing from Sydney and Melbourne, Haiku Hands established their presence with the tongue in cheek, rave-inspired Not About You which was ‘undeniably one of the best Australian debuts of the year’ (Purple Sneakers) and Jupiter, ‘a super-soaker spraying away everything bland with colour, fun and so much groove’ (Declan Byrne, Triple J Unearthed).

With an unquenchable thirst for good times and indulgence in all things art and pop, Haiku Hands pulls together numerous talents to create something original and off-the-wall, an unlikely but brilliant fusion of dance party and performance art.
Entrance Court

Also join us on Wed 30 May as we we explore and celebrate our own mortality, investigating issues of life and death in Vivid Art After Hours: Let's Talk About Death. It Won't Kill; You, or Wed 6 June as we explore collaboration and how we can find common ground when conflict emerges in Vivid Art After Hours: Common Ground - Politics and Shifting Perspectives.