When your exhibition can’t go online: intimacy vs pornography

NGA’s exhibition The Body Electric was unable to pivot digitally during COVID-19. We speak with the exhibition's curators about notions of intimacy, imaged desire and perceptions of the inappropriate.

Intimacy is a curious consideration in our times. While COVID-19 restrictions have prevented us from not only being intimate – but within close proximity – the flipside is that some of the most intimate aspects of our personal lives have been exposed on public domains, from obsessive driven hobbies to bedrooms-come-offices in zoom conferencing.

Much also has been said of the lack of ‘intimacy’ felt in online programming. While it has been a savour to the sanity of many to bring culture directly into our homes via a digital pivot, most agree that the experience of sitting with an art work in a gallery, or in a theatre, is hard to replicate.

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Gina Fairley is ArtsHub's Senior Contributor, after 12 years in the role as National Visual Arts Editor. She has worked for extended periods in America and Southeast Asia, as gallerist, arts administrator and regional contributing editor for a number of magazines, including Hong Kong based Asian Art News and World Sculpture News. She is an Art Tour leader for the AGNSW Members, and lectures regularly on the state of the arts. She is based in Mittagong, regional NSW. Instagram: fairleygina