Orchidaceae porta is a creative partnership between Holly Goodridge and Shan Dante, combining queer theory and expanded painting to challenge societal norms and create a new sense of reality.
Using various art forms such as performance, sculpture, painting, and sound, the collective expands within an immersive gallery experience. By highlighting the connection between the audience and the artwork, the work remains critical of traditional ideas about gender and neurodiversity. Goodridge and Dante aim to convey the feeling of being "different" that marginalised artists often experience by moving away from the established norms set within limited parameters.
The orchid is the conceptual and visual symbol of the artist's inner and exterior self. It represents the queer self as a spectacle of the exterior merged with multifaceted characteristics within survival, beauty, and death. Orchids, much like the queer body, ebbs and flows shapes, colours, and environments, subverting conventional binary notions of what is understood. By utilising survival techniques, these queer entities demonstrate resilience and adaptability, navigating a geography alien to them.
Orchidaceae porta is a bud of exploration, facilitating discussions and encouraging its viewers to reflect on their adaptability and growth within the boundaries of normative society.
Images courtesy the artist and Platform Arts Geelong.