Hard Times Require Furious Dancing by Ian Thomas

Explore a striking series of large-scale textile works inspired by dancefloors, nightlife and the communities that gather around them.

Combining text, fabric and visual storytelling, Ian Thomas reflects on Oxford Street's enduring role as a place of expression, connection and belonging. Rich with colour, texture and cultural references, these works celebrate the ways people come together to create visibility, solidarity and joy.

Artist statement:

Taking its name from Alice Walker’s 2010 book of poetry, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing is an exploration of queer cultural memory through textiles, text and the experience of collective celebration. This body of work considers the dancefloor as a site of resistance, where bodies gather, identities are rehearsed and communities are formed against the pressures of exclusion, violence and erasure. 

Drawing on disco and New Romanticism in the 1970s and 80s, the works trace how queer-led subcultures transformed nightlife into a shared space for resistance, pleasure and belonging. In disco, ecstatic movement became survival. Pleasure itself operated as defiance. Later, the New Romantics disrupted fixed ideas of gender and masculinity through theatricality, adornment and self-invention, offering new possibilities for queer visibility within Thatcher-era Britain. 

Using stitching, layering and embellishments, these textile processes mirror the intimate labour of building community through shared rituals. Slogans and lyrical references are embedded across the works like overheard conversations or remembered songs, unstable but persistent traces of collective identity. 

The exhibition connects these histories to contemporary queer nightlife in Sydney. From Mardi Gras to local clubs, bars and artist-led party collectives, nightlife remains a space where queer people create visibility, solidarity and refuge. At a time when LGBTIQA+ lives remain politically contested, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing asks what it means to gather, move together, and imagine joy not as escape, but resistance. 

Artist bio:

In a career of more than 25 years, Sydney-based artist Ian Thomas has staged over 20 solo exhibitions and had work included in numerous group shows in Sydney, Melbourne and London. His practice ranges from painting to mixed media and installations, and more recently, textile works. These newer works fuse textiles and text to create bold, tactile works rooted in protest and social commentary. Using fabric as medium and message, they stitch together stories of resistance and vulnerability. The work amplifies collective voices, transforming everyday materials into statements of resistance and care.  

Career highlights have included residencies at Bundanon and Factory49 Paris, public commissions for Brookfield Properties for Mardi Gras 2025 and Newtown Art Seat for Mardi Gras 2019, showing as part of Pride Amplified during World Pride 2023, a 2025 finalist in the Gosford and Fishers Ghost Art Prizes and receiving a highly commended award in the 2022 and 2023 Art Edit Self-Represented Art Prize.