Baby, 2023

Three-channel digital video, colour, sound; metal bench; profile-cut vinyl, inkjet print on clear vinyl, 11:29 min.

Baby was commissioned for Queer Encounters which was held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) between 17 February – 5 March 2023.

Sound design: Annie McKinnon

Graphic design: Charlie Cummings

Metalwork: Brad Black

Studio support: TWT

Exhibition Text: Sitting on a cold metal church-like pew, we notice an abundance of text on the surfaces around us. Across a triptych of screens, a narrative of personal experiences and memories unfolds, recited by the artist, Sidney McMahon. Some recollections are anchored in expressive detail while others are obscured by poetic abstraction. We’re implicated in this memory loop, as McMahon addresses us endearingly with ‘Baby, remember …’

Located in the Kaldor Hall, a space of looking, waiting and transiting, Baby creates another kind of zone, one that draws on queer experiences of time and states of becoming. Structured in stanzas, the text forms an orderly archive of thoughts, nostalgia and grief that are otherwise hard for McMahon to articulate. Every memory that the artist invokes points to transformative moments in their life. Through this act of recollection and repetition, itself a continual engagement with the past, they inch towards an indeterminable future.

You can read more about the exhibition here.