PINK ELEPHANT REVISITED - Presented by ARI Remix - Sunday 4-7pm 21 June 2026 - Exploring the Joy of ARIs - Loupe Studio - Yeerongpilly, Brisbane Magandjin - ARI Remix - A Polyvocal Memory of Australian Artist-Run Culture and Heritage "Work in Progress"

PINK ELEPHANT REVISITED – Presented by ARI Remix – Sunday 4-7pm 21 June 2026 – Exploring the Joy of ARIs – Loupe Studio – Yeerongpilly, Brisbane Magandjin

PINK ELEPHANT REVISITED – Presented by ARI Remix + Loupe Studio – Sunday 4-7pm 21 June 2026 – Exploring the Joy of ARIs – Loupe Studio – Yeerongpilly, Brisbane Magandjin.
Artist-run initiatives (ARIs, Pronounced Ahh-Rees) are essential Queensland/Australian artists’ organisations established and run by independent artists; with artists, friends, allies, collaborators and the communities they serve. As independent, autonomous organisations they exist, co-exist and persist outside the mainstream cultural monolith. They emerged as a local and global trend in the mid-century era as multi-modal, multi-purpose sites and domains where creative self-reliance and a DIY participatory and pluralising ethos is paramount. Typically borne out of thrift, acts of care, generosity and kindness towards non-traditional exhibition’s, self-publishing cultural forms, social practices, dialogue, reflection, ARI time and networking opportunities. In 2026, as a growing and evolving movement 21st century ARIs and their unique collections of cultural heritage encompass both online and offline settings. They embrace radical intent and enable people-power through a continuity of action, creative experimentation, artfulness, non-profit and profit-for-purpose motivations.
ARI REMIX + EXTRA ZINE, 2026

ARI REMIX + EXTRA ZINE, 2026

'...in general terms, Brisbane seems to have a strong homosexual overtone'

Sidney Nolan letter to John Reed, cited in Nancy Underhill, Nolan on Nolan, 2007 - page citation needed

Artist run organisations have held a contested space since their earliest beginnings. Whether it be the Contemporary Art Society with the Angry Penguins in the late 1930s or Inhibodress in the early 1970s, artists have challenged the sanctioned institutions of the time by creating their own opportunities for exhibition and dialogue.

An Ideology of Space: The Formation of Artist Run Organisations in Australia, Brett Jones, 2004

Frank Mitchell, with minimal money set up a coffee-house dive serving toasted sandwiches and raisin toast. He found a knockabout mate in Philippa McLaney and the life of it they made below stairs gave the city about its only glow.

Autobiographical reflections: Glass after Glass, Barbara Blackman,1997, p.117

Adventure into Brisbane’s main streets, a fragrant candle-lit salon to discover the daring circle of artists, visionaries, bohemians, and rebels who pushed against convention and normativity in life, art, society, and the status quo.

It is 1946, The Pink Elephant has arrived. Friends and colleagues including Frank Mitchell, Philippa McLaney, Dorothy Phillips, Ray Mann, Gordon Watson, Margaret Olley, Dr Raff Cilento, Dr Battalia, Babette Stephens, Mervyn Eadie, Cecel Knopke, Donald Friend, Dick Pring, Laurence Hope, Barrett (Barrie) Reid, Charles (Chas) Osbourne, Donald Savage, Vida Smith (later Horn), Elena Papathanapoulis,Judith Wright, Barbara Patterson (later Blackman), Charles Blackman, Pamela Seeman (later Crawford), Thea Astley, Edith Tighe, Douglas Murray, Brian Donelly, Laurence (Laurie) Collinson, Betty Birskys, Sydney Nolan, Jim Crawford, Ron Tomkins and Lillian Roxon are among the many artists, poets, authors, allies, drag personas and community documentarians who are members of the Pink Elephant artistic circle.

Borne out of thrift, creative self-reliance and a DIY participatory ethos the Pink Elephant is an early artist-run space [ARI]. It forms an essential part of Brisbane Magandjin’s enduring counterculture.

In a sense, as we are increasingly queering Queensland’s history in 2026 almost thirty years after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in this state in 1990-91, this is a ‘living’ circle of change agents and change processes. It is deserving of increased artistic, researcher and curatorial attention. An artist collective at 552 Queen Street with a fixed address for just over three years, making queer modernism, homosex, queer style, radical intent and queered sociality more explicit than ever before, in a cultural moment when doing so was perilous.

Hello dear ARI friends, colleagues and allies, please join us!

PINK ELEPHANT REVISITED

Presented by ARI Remix + Loupe Studio

Join us for the opening of Pink Elephant Revisited, an exhibition celebrating the 80th anniversary of Brisbane’s legendary Pink Elephant (1943–1949) and the artist-run spaces that shaped the city’s radical creative culture.

Through images, stories, and immersive installation, the exhibition revisits the artists, writers, rebels, and queer icons who forged independent cultural movements in post-war Brisbane.

Location at Shop 1/37 Ethel St, Yeerongpilly, Brisbane Magandjin QLD 4105.

Opening: Sunday 21 June, 4–7pm

Exhibition dates: 21 June – 5 July

Loupe Studio

All welcome.

PINK ELEPHANT: ONLINE PUBLIC PROGRAM 2026-28

https://ariremix.com.au/pink-elephant-revisited-a-pink-elephant-circle-1943-1949-memory-zine-anthology-2026-28-2/

A BIT OF PINK ELEPHANT BACKGROUND:

Conceptual starting points for this initial Bohemian Brisbane Magandjin art installation include a Forties technicolour sequence, with a DJ Jack remixed version shared below ( per YouTube), and an engaging article written by queer-trans artist colleague Queensland entertainer, writer and beloved QNews contributor Destiny Rogers. I am equally inspired by the work of many community documentarians who have written about the the wondrous queer world of the Pink Elephant. My installation work, titled Glow, 2026 recasts a small and rare collection of photographs from Frank Mitchell’s artist collection, now safeguarded at the State Library of New South Wales. In addition to life writing by Pink Elephant community documentarian Barbara Blackman, I am equally inspired here by the 1998 article written by Australian Professor Clive Moore; Pink elephants and drunken police: Bohemian Brisbane in the 1940s.

Destiny Roger’s important 2022 article is online here – thank you dear Destiny you will always be remembered!:

Accessed:

https://qnews.com.au/on-this-day-april-13-the-pink-elephant-cafe/

ARIs REVISITED Series 2022-28

ARIs REVISITED SERIES Part One

Headlands Revisited Presented by ARI Remix + Redland Art Gallery

Access here: https://artgallery.redland.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/exhibitions-2025/headlands-revisited/

ARIs Revisited – ARI Remix Documentation Part One

Access here:

https://ariremix.com.au/extra-zine-issue-107-headlands-revisited-exhibition-memory-zine/

https://ariremix.com.au/headlands-revisited-video-art-documentation/

https://ariremix.com.au/extra-zine-issue-107-headlands-revisited-exhibition-memory-zine/

In 2026, we also celebrate and acknowledge the 10th year anniversary of the deeply interconnected Ephemeral Traces and Barjai Miya exhibitions staged concurrently in 2016 at the University of Queensland Art Museum, St. Lucia, Brisbane.

Access Brett Jones ARI article here:

https://allconference.org.au/content/1-library/42-an-ideology-of-space-the-formation-of-artist-run-organisations-in-australia/an-ideology-of-space.pdf article here;

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Queer commemoration is a vital element of ARI Remix memory work.

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 process and internet artwork ‘work in progress’. 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;

Isabelle Baker, Sebastian Moody, @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 Australian Professor Clive Moore, Paul Bleakley, Yorick Smaal, Tobias Broughton, Destiny Rogers among many others.

Please Enjoy!

Warm winter wishes 2026,

Artist Paul Andrew

Help Paul to Preserve the ARI REMIX PROJECT 2025-26

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-preserve-ari-remix-living-archives

Public Program [Online]

https://ariremix.com.au/pink-elephant-revisited-a-pink-elephant-circle-1943-1949-memory-zine-anthology-2026-28-2/

Public Program [ Online with Ephemeral Traces, Barjai and Miya Ten Years On Anniversary Zine]

https://ariremix.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/ET-Final-with-Barjai-Miya-June-2026.pdf

REFERENCES [Select Only]

Anderson, M. E. (1987). Barjai, Miya studio and young Brisbane artists of the 1940s: towards a radical practice.

Anderson, P. (2016). Ephemeral Traces: Brisbane’s Artist-run Scene in the 1980s: the Catalogue Essay. University of Queensland Art Museum.

Anderson, P. (2015). Marginal notes: Towards a history of an artist-run scene Brisbane, the 1980s. Eyeline, 82, 59-65.

Barr, T., & Sullivan, R. J. (2005). Words to Walk by: Exploring Literary Brisbane. Univ. of Queensland Press.

Birsky, B. (1995). Remember the Pink Elephant?. Hecate, 21(1), 70-74.

Blackman, B., & Rodgers, L. (1997). Glass after Glass: autobiographical reflections (p. 407). Melbourne: Viking.

Blackman, C. (2024). Charles and Barbara Blackman: A Decade of Art and Love. Thames & Hudson Australia.

Bleakley, P. (2021). Fish in a barrel: Police targeting of Brisbane’s ephemeral gay spaces in the pre-decriminalization era. Journal of homosexuality, 68(6), 1037-1058.

Broughton, T. (2025). Angry Penguins and the making of an Australian avant-garde.

Bryan-Brown, L. (2016). DIY, ARI. Art Monthly Australasia, (289).

Caswell, M. (2019). Affective bonds: what community archives can. Community archives, community spaces: Heritage, memory and identity, 21.

Caswell, M. (2021). Urgent archives: Enacting liberatory memory work. Routledge.

Cook, T. (2011). ‘We are what we keep; we keep what we are’: archival appraisal past, present and future. Journal of the Society of Archivists, 32(2), 173-189.

Ferrier, C. (2004). Radical Brisbane, Carlton, Vic : Vulgar Press.

Halberstam, J. (2020). The queer art of failure. Duke University Press.

Hassall, A. (2008). The Third Metropolis: Imagining Brisbane through Art and Literature 1940-1970 by William Hatherell; Words to Walk By: Exploring Literary Brisbane by Todd Barr and Rodney Sullivan.

Hatherell, W. (2007). The third metropolis: Imagining Brisbane through art and literature, 1940-1970. Macmillan.

Jones, P. (2004). Art & life by Philip Jones, Allen & Unwin.

King, T. A. (1994). Queer pride and epistemological prejudice. The politics and poetics of camp, 23.

Milliken, R. (2010). Mother of Rock. ReadHowYouWant. com.

Moore, C. (2001). Sunshine and rainbows: The development of gay and lesbian culture in Queensland. Univ. of Queensland Press.

Moore, C. (1998). Pink elephants and drunken police: Bohemian Brisbane in the 1940s [Paper in: Gay and Lesbian Perspectives, edited by Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon].

Moore, T. (1998). Romancing the city—Australia’s bohemian tradition: Take two. Journal of Australian Studies, 22(58), 56-65.

Radical Times Archive, Radical Times Archive- “Collect, Preserve, and Share”, accessed;https://radicaltimes.info/

Smaal, Y. (2015). Sex, Soldiers and the South Pacific, 1939-45: Queer Identities in Australia in the Second World War. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Underhill, N. (2015). Sidney Nolan: A Life. NewSouth

Nolan, S., & Underhill, N. (2007). Nolan on Nolan: Sidney Nolan in his own words.

Osborne, C. (1986). Giving it away: The memoirs of an uncivil servant

Web Resources including;

Collection 5: Sasha Soldatow further papers, State Library of New South Wales.

https://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110637992

Jim and Pamela Crawford Collection, Fryer Library UQ.

https://manuscripts.library.uq.edu.au/downloads/uqfl301.pdf

Papers of Laurence Collinson, National Library of Australia.