theVOV is delighted to welcome Queercircle for an exploratory conversation about the future of safe digital spaces for LGBTQ+ people. Led by Queercircle Founder & Director Ashley Joiner, Gemma Rolls Bentley and artist Nuka Nayu, the panel will explore the potential for technology to provide safety beyond a physical world and the role that it can play in building a global inclusive community.

Speakers:

Left to Right:

Ashley Joiner, Founder & Director, Queercircle.

Since 2016, QUEERCIRCLE has hosted exploratory workshops and events with artists, curators, writers and community organisers to develop a programme that is befitting to the needs and aspirations of the LGBTQ+ community.

Gemma Rolls Bentley, Curator.

Gemma Rolls-Bentley is a curator, writer, lecturer and business leader working across a variety of contexts, from technology and the art market to the charitable sector and public institutions. Gemma has just been appointed Chief Curator at Avant Arte, a platform for the biggest community of young art lovers in the world. She joins Avant Arte’s mission to make it radically more accessible to discover and collect art whilst retaining the elevation of quality and depth of expression that makes art so impactful. For the past 5.5 years Gemma has been at the leading online art platform Artsy, where she was Curatorial Director and a regular editorial contributor. She is also a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art and an advisor to early stage startups and cultural projects. Gemma is co-chair of the board of trustees for the new charity Queercircle which aims to support art, culture, health and well-being in the LGBTQ+ community, and she was a trustee of SE London art festival Deptford X from 2014 - 2017. Over the past 15 years Gemma has delivered projects exploring cultural representation of queer identity and gender equality for organisations including Gay Times, the National Portrait Gallery, WOW Festival, Somerset House, Daata Editions, Soho House Group and the Fawcett Society. She is also an advocate for queer families and often speaks publicly about her experience since becoming a parent in 2019. 

Nuka Nayu is a multidisciplinary artist from Korea. Nayu is a recent graduate of MA Sculpture at Royal College of Art and previously graduated from Goldsmiths studying BA Fine Art (Hons). They seek to temporarily invoke a state of ‘becoming’; a constantly shifting threshold within the absent and invisible. Their practice corresponds with their anthropological research, interactions and investigations through experiences with shamans, alchemists, cult religion members, paranormal investigators, treasure hunters, conspiracy theorists, prophets and occult groups to aggregate a shadow of social norms, structures and boundaries which become vantage points of illusive realities.

Victoria Westerman, Co-founder of Visualogical & theVOV.

This event has ended, watch it On Demand here: