Matilda Ellis is a queer artist, illustrator and educator, who's work explores the power and joy of queer community. Through drawing, quilting and teaching she uses her work to capture scenes of nightlife, performance and resistance.
She draws live in situ in iconic London venues such as Dalston Superstore and Bethnal Green Working Men's Club to capture the energy and magic of drag and queer nightlife performance.
This show is the culmination of around 5 years of exploration with textiles as way to create tangible/touchable heirlooms for queer experiences and families.
The title of the show comes from a misremembered phrase of a patron at the 'Caravan Club' a bar in London only open for six weeks in 1934 that was described by the authorities as "absolutely a sink of iniquity' that was only frequented by sexual perverts, lesbians and sodomites"
This phrase which I encountered in, 'Gay Bar' (2021) by Jeremy Atherton Lin, exemplifies the inherent transience of attempts to archive the power and flaws of queer clubbing. This exhibition is an alternate archive.
