The Melt Festival of Queer arts and culture has attracted international attention this year, with an installation of nude bodies on the Story Bridge and pop icons Take That and Sophie Ellis-Bextor to perform.
Now in Week Two, Melt is a three week, city-wide festival of cabaret, music, dance, theatre and visual arts celebrating Queensland’s LGBTQIA+ community from 23 October to 10 November.
The festival includes live shows from punk rockers Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers, Australian cabaret performer Disco Hans and Australian queer history podcasters Rudy Rigg and Hannah McElhinney.
L-R: Rudy Rigg and Hannah McElhinney PHOTO: supplied
Following their short-form videos showcasing LGBTQIA+ history going viral on Instagram and TikTok, Rainbow History Class is a podcast dedicated to telling the queer stories you weren’t taught in school.
‘The podcast came about because we had such a high demand for people wanting to know more than we could fit into one-minute, bite-size-chunk videos on social media,’ says Rigg.
‘We like to explore all the nooks and crannies of queer history and take a deep dive.
‘We decided we wanted to do a live show and we wanted it to be a bit different from the podcast.
Deep dives into queer history
‘Audiences can expect a lot of wormhole moments and deep dives you wouldn’t necessarily get if you went to a university lecture. It’s going to be a really fun time.’
Also heading to Brisbane is Matt Gilbertson, better known to audiences as cabaret performer Disco Hans, who is bringing his latest stage extravaganza, Disco Spektackular.
Disco Hans. PHOTO: supplied
Marrying dance and song with topical comedy, the show recently snared Gilbertson Best in Festival and Best Cabaret Awards at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival.
‘Hopefully we’re bringing some colour into everybody’s lives. There’s a lot of glitter, a lot of fun songs, a lot of boys with their shirts off, so something for everybody,’ says Gilbertson.
Come to the cabaret
Other cabaret shows include Halloween Cabaret, featuring strippers, burlesque dancers and circus performers and Bad Lesbian, in which Ange Ponting searches her soul using iconic sapphic songs as inspiration.
Leather Lungs is billed as ‘a hilarious cabaret romp featuring a voice spanning over four octaves with the flamboyance of Prince, the force of Aretha and a range as mind-blowing as Freddie’s.’
Brisbane’s Ripped, Suave, and La Teaze are other highlights of the festival’s extensive cabaret program.
Plenty of theatre if that’s your jam
Theatre, too, is part of Melt and the line-up sees Frankie Valentine bring her one-woman show about her experiences as a queer woman working in the sex industry to the Brisbane Powerhouse’s Rooftop Terrace.
Frankie Valentine. IMAGE Darren Gill
Burn It is Lydia Kuelson’s dark and hilarious drama about a queer post-breakup camping trip and Slippery, a play by Esther Dougherty delves into questions of betrayal, ecstasy and murder.
Helios is a modern-day retelling of the story of sons of the Greek god of the sun and Functional Bottom, is a darkly humorous glimpse at a year in the life of Melbourne artist and writer Jessi Ryan.
Visual arts
The Melt 2.0 line-up also offers an impressive roster of visual arts events.
Fever Dream is an eclectic new exhibition from Brisbane artist and Brisbane Writers Festival creative director Jackie Ryan.
IMAGE: Jackie Ryan
Friction is a three-day event featuring an art exhibition, panel discussions, workshops and performances spotlighting queerness in Indigenous knowledge from around the world.
Easton Dunne’s Welcome to Paradise, comprises many shapes and symbols prominent in his native Rockhampton ‘turned pink and fluffy’.
A key feature of the visual arts component of the festival is a city-wide display of works by Bidjara artist Christian Thompson exploring notions of identity in marginalised communities.
Brisbane nudes up on the Story Bridge
A highlight of the Melt 2.0 visual arts line-up was a live installation of thousands of nude bodies by acclaimed New York based photographer Spencer Tunick.
Best known for his images of vast groups of naked people, Tunick invited more than 100 participants to take part in Tide 2023: an installation celebrating diverse bodies.
Tide 2023. IMAGE: supplied by Spencer Tunick
Tide marked Tunick’s debut exhibition in Australia and provided the prelude to Rising Tide, the installation Tunick created for Melt 2.0 in 2024.
Rising Tide took place on the city’s iconic Story Bridge which was closed from 1am to 7am on 27 October. Over 5000 naked people congregated in what Tunick described as ‘a celebration of diversity, equity, inclusion and Brisbane’s vibrant LGBTQIA+ community and its allies’.
Over 5000 people got nude for Spencer Tunick’s installationon Brisbane’s Story Bridge. IMAGE: supplied by Spencer Tunick
The Rising Tide installation can be viewed as a projected video exhibition at the Brisbane Powerhouse throughout the Melt Festival.
The closing weekend features the River Pride Parade on Sat 9 Nov, a flotilla decorated in rainbow colours, heading downriver from William Jolly Bridge to the Brisbane Powerhouse, led by festival ambassador Courtney Act.
Festival Ambassador Courtney Act will lead the River Pride Parade. IMAGE: supplied
The festival closes on 10 November with a celebratory Pride Picnic, a family-friendly community event being held at Southbank.
Or round out the closing weekend with pop icons on the Sunday 10 November and head to A Day on the Green at Mt Cotton for an afternoon of Take That, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Ricki-Lee.
Festival Box Office says while some shows are sold out, there are plenty of tickets left for dozens of events so check out the program here
