The Home of Earthly Delights

Location: Walker Street Gallery and Arts Centre, Dandenong
Artist: David Lee Pereira and Goodie
Documented by Phil Soliman
Completed: 2020

Lee Pereira and Goodie have created a gentle yet deep aesthetic that explores themes of gender expression and sexuality in their mural, The Home of Earthly Delights. Their aim was to represent their individual voices as members of the queer community as well as broader perspectives that reflect queer voices in general. Offering a queer voice is vital to Lee Pereira and Goodie, who have personally experienced their voice being “suppressed and hushed away”.

Lee Pereira draws on his own experience coming out and the fear associated with community acceptance of his choices. He is optimistic about current representations of queerness in contemporary media and is hopeful that projects such as this one, will help promote broader empathy, “we talk as a community about pride, but how that starts is with visibility, acceptance, and support.” Goodie, beingly slightly younger, is grateful for the pathways that queer people like Lee Pereira have pathed for them, however, there’s still a level of discrimination pervading public spaces and institutions. “I think it’s important to keep disrupting harmful norms, keep fighting for rights and safer spaces, and continue to create spaces for people to share their experiences” says Goodie.

During painting of the mural, local queer artists and community members were invited to engage with the artists and share their experiences. “we had the privilege of hearing from other queer and unique members of the community and listen to stories from our LGBTQIA+ siblings. We are really lucky to have the opportunity to tell our stories through our work on this scale, and hope that it inspires more people to tell their own stories” said the artists.

These interactions have been captured and curated into a short documentary which will be available here soon.

About David Lee Pereira

Lee Pereira’s practice is primarily based in drawing and painting as a studio artist and a mural artist. He has exhibited in solo and group shows and has worked on rural art installations publicly and privately on walls mainly through Melbourne, Sydney, Berlin and rural communities outside of the city. Pereira is currently collaborating with creative studios Juddy Roller and Authority Creative and exhibiting work in Melbourne, Sydney, Berlin and the United States. His work is melancholic, emotive and sensual, alluding to his sexuality, gender and identity as an Australian-Eurasian queer exploring the botanical natural and incorporeal world through addled eyes.

About Goodie

Goodie is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice incorporates painting, sculpture, performance and the use salvaged materials to produce installations. By fabricating fictional architectures and objects, or adjusting existing architectures, Goodie considers how spaces reflect, orientate and hold bodies. Recent work explores notions of friendship, ownership, gender and binaries within suburban and urban landscapes. Goodie has exhibited around Australia and overseas, and has collaborated on projects with the Melbourne Fringe Festival, Signal Arts, Juddy Roller, Collingwood Yards and the Abbotsford Convent. They were the curator of Intermission Project at the Collingwood Arts Precinct in 2018, and are part of the curatorial panel at Science Gallery Melbourne. Goodie lives and works in inner Naarm (Melbourne).

This project was delivered as part of the 2020 Unwrapped festival, which celebrated queer perspectives and voices in the creative arts.

Interview with David Lee Pereira and Goodie