ACCA Podcast · ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

We need to talk: with Tourmaline and Sophie Prince

January 29, 2026·58 min·3 clips

Pollinator ends its central argument with Marsha P. Johnson’s funeral procession and an explosion of marigolds and ashes.

The welcome matters here. Sophie Prince settles the audience, names the exhibition Tourmaline Transcendent, and acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung, Bunurong, and Bunurong language groups. Tourmaline answers with gratitude. She describes the exhibition as an invitation shaped by careful curation, a generous reception, and the feeling the work brings into the room. The conversation opens out slowly. A question about artwork as document leads to Happy Birthday Marsha, made with Sasha Watzel and supported by a community that included Arthur Jafa and Keanu Reeves. Marsha becomes more than a subject. Tourmaline talks about A Flower That Lives Forever as another way to catch detail, nuance, and the continued presence of Marsha's spirit and life. The song carries the theology. When I Die, the only song Tourmaline knows Marsha wrote, points to a life imagined before and beyond the body. The gallery holds the story. The screened work includes Marsha reading, then Augusto Machado sharing a New York memory rooted in exhaustion, care, and survival. The ferry story stays humble. Tourmaline recalls Marsha seeing how tired people were, then choosing the Staten Island ferry as an improvised cruise from the bottom of Manhattan. That small decision opens the larger point. Care is not treated as an idea in the air. It is an ordinary choice to move people toward a little room inside difficulty. The ending eases the pressure. Tourmaline talks about taking a nap, walking, being with baby's breath, and waking the next day somewhere different. Judgment is what gets refused. She names the importance of not punishing herself for being in one state rather than another, because each state still adds to life. Agency is the note the room leaves on. The closing exchange turns toward the right to choose rest, work, and the people beside you, before the audience answers with applause.

As heard by us

A thoughtful gallery conversation about art, memory, and the afterlife of Marsha P. Johnson.

Sophie Prince opens Tourmaline Transcendent with welcome, acknowledgement, and a clear frame before the talk moves into Marsha P. Johnson, community memory, and the exhibition itself.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a warm, reflective live conversation around Tourmaline Transcendent and Marsha P. Johnson.

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