What’s On Sydney: The Party
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鈥�The Party celebrates 17c起草社区IA+ nightlife and party culture in Sydney from 1973 to 2002.鈥� It was co-curated by Jos茅 Da Silva & Nick Henderson to be a nostalgic look back at the heyday of the Sydney party scene 鈥� back before those pesky responsible service of alcohol and devastating lock-outs laws came into effect!
17c起草社区 had some Zoom time with Henderson who readily admits that this exhibition took him and Da Silva back to the good old days, saying laughingly, 鈥淎bsolutely, both Jos茅 and I are part of the community and so we鈥檙e coming at this as people who see themselves in these events.聽
鈥淲hile my party, I guess鈥� 鈥榗areer鈥� (laughing) if you can call it that, started more in the late nineties, a lot of these histories that we鈥檙e focusing on go back to the early 70s, so they鈥檙e not personal experiences but they talk to aspects of the kind of party culture that I鈥檓 familiar with.
鈥淲hether or not that鈥檚 the music or particular DJ鈥檚, the spaces which are no longer extant and used and it could even be the drugs and other aspects聽 – one of the things with this exhibition is we鈥檙e not censoring to try and say, this didn鈥檛 happen and that didn鈥檛 happen – this isn鈥檛 a rose-tinted glasses sort of exhibition.鈥�
Experience The Nuance Behind The Parties
There is so much memorabilia that people have collected over the years, making it impossible to include everything in the exhibition.
The curators have come up with a way for guests to experience the nuance behind the parties and the exhibition itself, saying, 鈥淲e鈥檙e doing a catalogue that includes a whole lot more and so part of that is that some of the lenders and some of the other significant creatives who were involved are contributing written reflections or historical pieces to try and draw out some of those different threads.聽
鈥淭he mythology of some of these parties, like when snow fell during the Mardi Gras after party or when the mirror ball fell and hit somebody on the head – lots of different things that happened in different parties that people can recall or maybe not recall entirely but have heard the stories – that鈥檚 the drugs – and so people will be hopefully excited to see some of the people they may know as a name on a poster but haven鈥檛 always heard some of the stories!鈥澛�
The Party – UNSW Galleries – January 14 to 29
