Pink Elephant Revisited – Presented by ARI Remix – ONLINE/OFFLINE PROGRAM 21 June to 15 July 2026 – ‘Eighty Years On’ – Exploring A Pink Elephant Circle 1943-1949
Youth culture is a defining characteristic of Queensland/Australian artist-run culture and heritage. Documenting youth culture is an essential aspect of the ARI Remix + EXTRA zine memory work we enact.
HELLO!
Conceptualised here as an ongoing archival art project about the evolving and growing Queensland/Australian artist-run culture and heritage movement. This passion project is situated in both online and offline settings (2022-28).
Project One- Headlands Revisited 2025 – Redland Art Gallery, Cleveland
Project Two: Pink Elephant Revisited 2026 – Loupe Studio, Yerongpilly.
Project Three: Big Fun 2027-28 – Exploring and recasting humour inside SEQ ARI practice. From Brisbane Fluxus, Institutional Critique to Social Practice. To be staged as another online/offline program at an SEQ ARI site tbc.
My aim with this initial and modest three-part pilot series is to continue to radically re-imagine, recast, strengthen and advocate Queensland/Australian ARI activity 1940 to Now which persistently exists outside the mainstream cultural monolith.and as a terrific alternative to neoliberalism.
Broadly viewed, my artistic interest is in making constructive provocations. Arts-based provocations which embrace community-driven expressions of artistic activity, human dignity and a growing biodiversity of independent cultural knowledge production and transmission.
In the 21st Century era of the Anthropocene where so many populations and ecologies are negatively impacted, ARI Remix plays a unique and small role in supporting and amplifying the evolving and ever-growing Queensland/Australia artist-run culture and heritage movement.
A cultural movement which typically includes exhibitions, installations, publications, a pluriverse of writing and reflecting, critical and explorative temporalities, essential anthropecenic expressions, interventions and varied cocreative modalities.
The Anthropocene—is the recent and current geological epoch commonly defined by massive and unprecedented human impact on Earth’s fragile climate and increasingly precarious ecosystems—is both urgent and vital for artists and ARI communities of practice. These platforms sites, places and people signficantly shift the artistic paradigm from mere aesthetics, art history and reflective inquiry to radical imagination, decolonising efforts, eco-activism, interdisciplinary storytelling and a continuity of activism efforts.
Radical imagination is essential for me as a 21st Century artist. As a long-term ARI insider where Queensland’s many precarious and deeply interconnected continuities of action are also being erased, devastated and diminished through state-sanctioned development, neglect, ignorance and mass erasure, community archives can help to strengthen these actions and people-powered domains.
Typically, art translates complex, often abstract scientific data about climate change, resource depletion, ecological loss and extinction into visceral, emotional, artful and socially rich and engaging community-based experiences. This Forties LGTBQIA+ ‘feeling installation’ happens to coincide with the new Platypus publication series accessed just below. But one key example of current and proximal practice inside SEQ ARI culture 🙂
A big hearty thank you everyone for your interest, kindness, generousity and support over the past 45 years! I am truly grateful!
Warm wishes,
Artist Community Facilitator Paul Andrew
Header and Zine cover image: Portrait of poet, Barjai Zine co-founder with Laurie Collinson, young artist advocate and supporter and facilitator of local artist communities Barrett Reid, Surfers Paradise c.1946-47. Photo by Dick Pring and Frank Mitchell Pink Elephant Collection 1945-49. Collection Soldatow and other papers, SLNSW. See also; https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/40-boxes
Opening Winter Solstice Event – Sunday 21 June 2026
Delving into a brief history of SEQ ARIs was an all to rare and important element of the opening event. ARI Elders including Angelina Martinez, Marisa Georgiou, Louise Rollman, Elysha Rei, Jamie Dabrowski among others shared generous insights into the challenges and joys of starting and sustaining an ARI over the past forty years.
Discussion included keen insights and anxieties from new and emerging ARI artists who face similar challenges in 2026. These encompass identifying, accessing, renting and sustaining a fixed address for their independent artistic activity, discussion, DIY self-publishing and essential community-based projects. I told a brief story about how the Pink Elephant was able to secure affordable premises next to a funeral parlour. Located next door to a fragrant florist shop and funeral parlour at 550 Queen Street Petrie Bight for almost three and a half years. The Pink Elephant was an early artist-run space where so many transformations and artful lived-experiences unfolded.
Pink Elephant Revisited- Presented by ARI Remix. Opening night: Delving into a brief history of SEQ ARIs 1940 to Now. Disccusion with ARI Elders and members of new and emerging ARIs.
PINK ELEPHANT REVISITED
KEY PROJECT FEATURE
Bohemian Brisbane Magandjin feat. artist Ron Tomkins b. 1928 – d. 2016.
Ron was also known as the very Monte Carlo-esque Christine de Winter in their fabulous Forties drag persona, and was a regular at the Pink Elephant.
Ron adopted this life-long genderbending name and non-binary identity after the character Rebecca, in the famous secret queer film eponymously titled Rebecca.The 1940 Classic was a Gothic psychological film noir thriller adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel directed by noir-legend Alfred Hitchcock. Starring actors Laurence Olivier (Maxim), Joan Fontaine (the second Mrs. de Winter), and Judith Anderson (Mrs. Danvers). Rebecca is widely celebrated by queer film scholars as a foundational text in queer horror and cinema. Despite strict 1940 wartime censorship, it survives as a queer classic due to the intense, homoerotic and queering subtext between the deceased Rebecca and her devoted housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers.
Please note; as a recast queer oral history recording, and a verbatim one this is ‘pure’ Ron, it embodies his non-binary tenor, a carefree spirit and insouciance. Accordingly, this public history interview contains language and the use of words, expressions and asides from his younger Forties Pink Elephant days. Here, Ron is Ron, Christine De Winter and many alternative identities embodied over time, Ron aims to express a broad view of what was unfolding in ‘late’ Bohemian Brisbane. A cultural moment when the intertwined lures of Oscar Wilde, Arthur Rimbaud, Andre Gide and Molly house culture, LGBTQIA+ codes, resistance, protest and popular culture was paramount. Sadly, the proposed series of interviews with Ron didn’t eventuate as he passed away in 2016, this is a stand alone piece expressly remixed for Pink Elephant Revisited.
A Pink Elephant Circle 1945-1949 – DIY Memory Zines – Exploring zines as community archives. Soft Launch on June 21 2026.
PINK ELEPHANT REVISITED – ZINE ANTHOLOGY 2026-28
PINK ELEPHANT REVISITED – ROOM SHEET – LOUPE STUDIO
ZINES ‘in progress 2026-28 – CLICK ON POST TO READ [in non-linear order while we make a few more zines in coming months]
EXTRA ZINE ISSUE # 153
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EXTRA ZINE SCRAPBOOKS
Queer Scavenger Scrapbooks and zines are an essential part of my artistic practice. Queer scavenger techniques—can be understood as a methodology grounded in the foundational work of American scholar Jack Halberstam—one involving collecting and producing information from disparate, unconventional and eccentric sources. It is a practice of disrupting traditional, linear research, societal norms and conventions by bringing together fragmented, marginalised pieces of evidence to yield alternative histories and creative truths. This is especially relevant doing recuperative memory work inside Queensland/Australian ARI culture and heritage where queer-trans LGBTQIA+ lived experiences, collaborations and creative practices – both analogue and digital – are often covert, cryptic or coded.
Loupe Studio Room Sheet.
VIDEO ART FEATURE
In Loving Memory of Ron Tomkins b.1928-d.2016 – aka Christine de Winter, queering the city regular at the Pink Elephant, 552 Queen Street, Petrie Bight, 1945-49.
Bohemian Brisbane Magandjin 1940 to Now
ABOVE: VIDEO ARTWORK
Video Artwork by Paul Andrew with Neal Price, Ron Tomkins, Kaz Knights and @soggybreadissad, 2026.
Oral History as creative archival assemblage. From the collection of artist, queer activist, author and oral historian Neal Price. Made for the Pink Elephant Revisited ‘feeling installation’ at Loupe Studio, June-July 2026, Yeerongpilly., Brisbane Queensland.
A big hearty thank you to Loupe Studio, Loupe Imaging, Christine Ko and Louis Lim for kindly and generously staging this 80 th year multimodal installation and commemoration.
Ron Tomkins is a QuElder. They played an invaluable role in the Prejudice and Pride exhibition staged at the Museum of Brisbane in 2010.
These images of Ron with Friends are drawn from Neal Price artist collection. The images below are from the Prejudice and Pride exhibition depicting Ron looking at Forties photographs at the Reverse Balls. Annual Balls were common in the Thirties, Forties and Fifties. The Reverse Balls were staged in Surfers Paradise where so many LQBTQIA+ people gathered each year and where so much queer joy emerged. The term Reverse was used by people like Ron who reversed their genders and identities in relatively safe surounds. These balls are examples of Queensland queer LGBTQIA+ activism, resistance and protest, Spaces and places where people young and old gathered along the Gold Coast for one very marvellous night each year. These nights extended for days and weeks. Of course, it is important to recognise that this was also a perilous yet fun way to resist normativity, conformity, and the status quo. As this era in Queensland was one of Forties Queensland Police Corruption, Drunken Police, extreme homophobia, racism and strict censorship.
Gathering together in meeting places like the Pink Elephant, The Ballad Bookshop and Reverse Balls was a way to connect, kick up your heels and strike up new friendships with like minded people.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Arts-based Queer commemoration provides a vital antidote to historical erasure and annhilation of knowledge production. We do this by creatively preserving, honouring, and sharing LGBTQIA+ histories, archives, and lived experiences. This approach strengthens community resilience, reduces stigma and loss of collective memory, and elevates public awareness and public history. We explicitly value, acknowledge and credit the ancestors, activists, artists, queer allies and Queer Elders/QuElders who led the way for ARI formations, current civil rights, social justice and cultural justice efforts.
A BIG HEARTY THANKYOU EVERYONE!! It takes a community to raise and sustain a creative archival assemblage. Recasting the ARI Past inside the ARI present is not a simple process. I would like to express my deepest thanks and heartfelt gratitude to;
@Soggybreadissad, Erika Scott, Tom Truong, Michele Helmrich, Ash Barnes, Jacklyn Young, QAGOMA Research Library, Fryer Library UQ, Kyle Weise, Louis Lim, Christine Ko, Loupe Studio, Loupe Imaging, Joanna Kambourian, Neal Price, Adam Langley, AO Digital, Angelina Martinez, State Library of New South Wales SLNSW, Powerhouse Alliance & Museum, State Library of Queensland, National Library of Australia, Brisbane History Group, Werona Armstrong, Mila Andersson, Queensland Police Museum, Marilena Hewitt, John Waller, Old Brisbane Album, many ARI Remix Collective colleagues 2011-2026, in particular the ever-incredible incredible Peter Anderson, and extra extra extra special thanks to Clive Moore, Paul Bleakley, Yorick Smaal, Tobias Broughton, Destiny Rogers among many others.
Please Enjoy!
Help Paul to Preserve the ARI REMIX PROJECT 2025-26
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-preserve-ari-remix-living-archives
NB: See also, the amazing ongoing arts-based Brisbane Magandjin memory work and essential youthculture focus of Riculev -Soggybreadissad here; https://www.riculev.com/
COMPLEMENTARY ZINES June 2026 – Examples included in wall installation mural paste-up
EPHEMERAL TRACES ‘TEN YEARS ON’
This installation work also coincides with the 10th year anniversary of the ephemeral traces: Brisbane’s artist-run scene in the 1980s (Curator Artist Poet Peter Anderson) and Barjai and Miya Studios (Curator Michele Helmrich) exhibitions staged concurrently at the University of Queensland Art Museum [UQAM] in 2016. It was inside this cultural moment of localised recuperative ARI Culture memory work when ARI Remix was established.
Ephemeral Traces – Panel Discussion – No. 1. Archives Copy Access below.
NB: The second panel discussion titled: ‘Artist-run initiatives: DIY change agents?’ with Artist Curator Peter Anderson and artists Virginia Barratt, Brian Doherty, Jeanelle Hurst and Jay Younger reflecting on the Brisbane scene and its socio-cultural context is MIA.
ARI REMIX + EXTRA ZINE ANTHOLOGY 2022-24 01
Also;
Project Three is now underway in 2026-27.
ARI REMIX PRESENTS: BIG FUN: Exploring Humour in Queensland Art.
From Brisbane Fluxus, Institutional Critique to Social Practice.
ARIs Revisited is conceptualised as a community-based creative archival assemblage process for ‘Recasting the ARI Past inside the ARI Present’ at an ARI site tba in 2027-28. i.e. Funding permitted!