Launch: Eulogy for the Dyke Bar

Celebrate the launch of Eulogy for the Dyke Bar, an installation and participatory project by American artist Macon Reed at the National Art School café.

Presented by UNSW Galleries, the National Art School and Sydney WorldPride, Eulogy for the Dyke Bar is a sculptural environment and memorial to bygone dyke bars—an increasingly rare component of the queer cultural landscape. The installation incorporates a café and operating bar, and functions as an active community space for performances, cruising, socialising, and contemplating the future of queer spaces.

Join us on opening night for an evening of music, dance and performance to celebrate dyke culture with a set from Afro-Caribbean crip DJ Aquenta. Aquenta is founder of CRIP RAVE THEORY, a club night which draws on disabled knowledge to create more intersectionally-accessible rave spaces.

This project aims to reclaim the term ‘dyke’ in its most expansive sense and recognises that gender and identities are complex and fluid. Anyone who identifies with, or feels an allyship with, the dyke part of the queer spectrum is welcome and valued at the dyke bar.

Installation open: 9am–5pm Monday – Saturday

Café open: 9am–3pm Monday – Friday

Bar open: 5–10pm Tuesday – Friday

Aquenta is an Afro-Caribbean crip DJ living and playing on the unceded lands of the Eora Nation. She always draws on her roots when crafting her sets, and then spices things up by adding her other favourite flavours. Expect dancehall, grime, global club, ballroom, amapiano and everything in between. As well as being a DJ, Aquenta is an interdisciplinary artist, solicitor and curator/community organiser. She is the founder of CRIP RAVE THEORY; a club night which draws on disabled knowledge to create more intersectionally-accessible rave spaces. For Aquenta, DJing is both playful and political: space-making through occupation and sonic curation, aimed at expanding community and club culture.