To See and Be Seen by Conor Collins

Join us for the opening of ‘To See and Be Seen’.

To coincide with the launch of Queer Up North 1992-2002: Celebrating Manchester’s LGBTQ+ Heritage digital archive, HOME has commissioned Manchester based, queer artist Conor Collins to respond to selected material from the archive. This has culminated in the powerful exhibition To See and Be Seen, developed in HOME Arches and presented in HOME’s Granada Foundation Galleries..
Using the mediums of painting, photography and archival materials, the exhibition features seven distinct pieces which spark reflection on themes of identity and visibility whilst at the same time celebrating queer bravery and boldness.

This exhibition will run at HOME from 8th July until 30th October.

From the artist

Conor Collins speaks about his creative process and intentions for the exhibition:

“My brain feels like it’s hosting several conversations at once. Some beautiful. Some heartbreaking. Some shouting over each other in sequins with half a fag dangling out their mouth. There is so much inside this archive. So many lives refusing to sit quietly in the past.
Identity keeps surfacing again and again. Not identity as a tick box. Identity as survival. As performance. As invention. As something negotiated daily between the self and the world staring back at it.
One such story I can’t get out of my head is that of the story of Deborah Cheetham, taken from her Aboriginal family at just three weeks old and raised in a white Christian household as part of Australia’s Stolen Generation. That fracture. That dislocation. Then the extraordinary act of reclaiming voice through music.
Then there’s Della Grace performing masculinity and femininity not as opposites, but as possibilities. Who’s work and our life challenged the rigid idea that identity.
I keep coming back to bravery too, and the boldness of queer performance. People standing nude on stages singing, performing poetry, making comedy. Not apologising, not asking permission to exist. There’s something deeply moving about that level of visibility in a world where invisibility is the norm. After all, heaven forbid someone look at you on the tram, or a someone with a clip board approach you on market street.
I think one of the biggest themes emerging for me is this idea that archives extend lives. Not the first life, not the heartbeat. The final life. The life that exists in memory, in stories, in photographs, in ticket stubs somebody accidentally kept in a drawer for thirty years. I keep thinking about how we die twice, once when we take our final breath and again when our final story is told for the last time. An archive interrupts that second death. It says: ‘No. Not yet. They were here.’
Alongside the joy and celebration, there’s fear running through it too. Homophobia. The HIV epidemic. Loss sitting constantly in the corner of the room like background noise. Yet people still created, still loved, still performed and still laughed. That tension feels incredibly important to me. The coexistence of celebration and grief. Of terror and glamour. Of death and absolute, outrageous life.
This archive feels priceless because it doesn’t just preserve events, it preserves humanity. Messy, brave, funny, frightened, complicated humanity.
I hope it makes people think about what it really means to see somebody. Not to glance at them or categorise them in under three seconds like a bored customs officer. Truly see them and beyond that what it means to *be* seen.
For queer people, visibility is complicated.
Sometimes it’s liberation.
Sometimes it’s danger.
Sometimes it’s performance.
Sometimes it’s exhaustion."

Credits

Conor Collins (he/him)
Manchester Histories and Queer Up North
Archives+
Manchester City Council
HOME