Lisome Rum: Tales of Queer Joy – Bridport Arts Centre Foyer

Taking inspiration from the old Dorset words for happy and queer, Lisome Rum captures moments of LGBTQIA+ life from across the Dorset countryside, recalling moments of queer joy and gay abandon, both past and present.

Placing joy as the central provocation as an act of resistance against the continued attack on the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community, this new commission combines local responses with archive material, interviews and research, as a series of drawings.

Printed on wallpaper directly alluding to a familiar domesticity, the format references the spaces we inhabit and the places we call home.

Sammut’s work looks beyond the metropolitan and seeks to map a more complete account of queer lives across rural settings, while also challenging the dominant narrative of a heteronormative ‘green and pleasant land’.

His practice draws on queer histories to inform and embolden LGBTQIA+ people and encourage a greater understanding of these diverse lives.

Presented as part of Bridport Art’s Centre’s Our Stories: Queer in the Countryside season, the work is exhibited alongside free postcard-sized takeaways to encourage the further dissemination of the stories, which along with the wallpaper, will be donated to the Dorset History Centre as part of their archive of rural queer voices.

The exhibition runs from 23 July to the 30 August.

Find out more here.