ACCA Podcast · ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

Artist Talk and Book Launch: with r e a, Judith Ryan AM and Myles Russell-Cook

January 13, 2026·59 min·3 clips

Rhi connects queer, trans, and Black oppression to “this huge circle” repeating again.

The event opens ceremonially. Russell-Cook welcomes the audience at ACCA, names his role as Artistic Director and CEO, and acknowledges unceded Wurundjeri Woiwurrung lands before the conversation starts. He places the exhibitions in an international climate where trans rights have become a political target, then lets that urgency sit in the room without flattening the art around it. The tone is warm, but not soft. The discussion keeps circling art as a place where vulnerability, risk, and visibility are worked through by institutions, audiences, and the artist's long practice. Risk carries much of the talk. One speaker argues that major arts bodies often fall back on familiar repertory, predictable numbers, and audience comfort instead of making room for unsettling work. Opera Australia, Australian Ballet, La Traviata, and The Nutcracker come up as examples of repeatable cultural safety, where institutions avoid discomfort and protect attendance. Spectacle gets pressed too. The conversation links conservative choices to images that dazzle fast, travel cleanly online, and reassure viewers instead of troubling them. Then the focus turns inward. Russell-Cook asks why the guest's work has sat in an uncomfortable space, and catches himself, shifting from bringing it back to sharing it now. That small correction says a lot. The answer does not become a neat career arc. The artist describes using photography to deconstruct colonial positioning of the black body and its trauma. Photography is method here, not a shortcut to fame or recognition. It becomes a way to ask how bodies have been framed and injured over time. The close returns to the physical room, pointing people toward the catalog, prints, and a video work meant to be felt through sound and image.

As heard by us

An ACCA conversation that links trans-rights urgency with r e a's use of photography to challenge colonial positioning.

The ACCA framing is the real entry point: acknowledgment of Country, a direct account of why the paired exhibitions matter now, and a conversation that keeps circling back to trans rights and visibility.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play for ACCA's recorded talk on trans rights and photography as an artist's way of thinking through colonial positioning.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from ACCA Podcast