Featured Artist: Connor Ovenden-Shaw

Connor Ovenden-Shaw, Also Known as Foot, is a non-binary queer artist based on Wadawurrung land in Melbourne's outer west. Working within textile, photography and performance, they are known for their unique and absurdist take on gender identity, sustainability and beauty standards.

Connor's exhibition CONTENT WARNING: Queer, Fat, Sexy is currently showing at the Wyndham Art Gallery, where it critically examines the artist's enduring challenges that inform their art making. Examining what 'queer means to the artist and how they process and respond with what is regularly granted as 'normal', in this show we witness Connor explore, grapple and command topics around power and vulnerability, rejection and reclamation, and community and isolation through the mediums of photography, textiles, sculpture and video.

As part of their artists residency with the Tarneit Community Learning Centre, Connor also recently spearheaded a fantastic initiative called "Out There", a workshop promoting sustainable practises by inviting participants to creatively repurpose recycled fabrics into wearable art pieces. Connor is known for their ability to create whimsical yet fantastically designed garments from found fabrics, which otherwise would have gone into landfill.

It's been a real honour to print Connor's work over the last four months, and we very much look forward to working with them again in the future. If you can, we urge you to go and see the excellent CONTENT WARNING: Queer, Fat and Sexy exhibition before it closes - it will be open to the public until March 19th.

Take us back to where it all began. What led you to pursue art as a career path?

A series of unfortunate events in the most hilarious way I’d say. My family would say I’ve always been a creative child; in my formative years I hopped through different creative outlets, having left school with a passion for theatre, moving into writing and publication, nothing sitting right for various reasons until I relocated to a small regional town and gravitated towards photography. I had always loved the medium, but I started to experiment and learn, and everything began to click. It wasn’t until 3 years later however, that I’d finally begin adding all of my previous creative endeavors together. I feel now you can see my love of performance and literature through my photographs, though not immediate with self-portraiture, every image is rich with reference and silly queer intent.

Tell us a bit about your recent exhibition, CONTENT WARNING: Fat Queer and Sexy. This exhibition saw you turn inward as you explored facets of your personal queer identity and turned your non-linear journey of self-discovery into art pieces. What were some of the main concepts and themes you delved into with this exhibition?

Quite deliberately I wanted the name to be transparent and indicative of what I was exploring in this body of work. I looked at three facets of my own identity and lunged into each one individually and examined how each of those three self-identifiers impact and inform one another. In the end it became an intensely personal exploration of my identity tackling everything from my heritage, online presence, eating disorders to satire around ‘queerness’ and the pursuit of a positive body image.

I wanted the exhibition as a whole to be playful and invite the viewer to possibly examine their own labels and how they impact each other and their navigation of the self. That may sound very ‘new age’, but I think it’s important to continue to look inward to understand who you are and how you present to the world, I simply choose to do that in a satirical way.

I’m interested to learn more about your drag alter ego, Foot. Who is Foot, and how did they come into being? Has the creation of Foot made an impact on your art process?

Foot is a relatively new addition to my practice however they are what I would consider the most important evolution in art making. Foot is my drag alter ego, I usually describe them as an otherworldly living mannequin, a vessel to show my creations that embodies them, if you will. I’ve always loved drag as an art form, though I’d always been presented the art form in just one way, men depicting women, very linear in its ideals.

Once I moved to Melbourne I sought out other drag, I knew it was out there but I wanted and needed to witness it in person. I was presented with drag in all its ideals, gender and artistic freedom in abundance, and from then on I wanted a drag character.

Originally I was concocting a character known as ‘Pauline Petite’, an obvious jab at existing plus-size and an homage to a family member. It never stuck however, and it came at a time where my art practice was evolving drastically, moving from depictions of others to self-exploration. I suddenly clicked to being worthy of celebration and with that celebration came Foot, a drag character quite literally coming to me in a dream where I was performing crazy numbers in wild creations. I then made a TikTok video in jest of the dream, it did the numbers, the rest was history as they say.

An aspect of your abundant creativity lies in your talent for sewing and designing wearable art pieces from materials which would otherwise go into landfill, a topic that you touched on in your recent artists residency with the Wyndham City Council. What draws you to working with textiles and fashion design?

Fatness first and foremost. During the Pandemic Lockdowns I travelled down the rabbit hole of sustainable fashion and the discussions about ethical buying, a luxury for fat folk with so little variety in sizing and a costing curve to make your eyes water. I started thinking about creating my own clothes, and this eventually collided with my drag blossoming and it all came to what I create today. As a child I was taught the value of a dollar and to be mindful of our place in the natural world, I love a good op shop or second-hand sale, so it was only natural I carried that in to my art practice today. Second-hand textiles are these days incredibly easy to access, so I just see it as common sense.

What are some of the most important issues around gender identity that you believe need to be addressed right now, and how do your hope your art will help facilitate these changes?

At present queer identity is under attack both by bias media and even within their own walls, trans and queer individuals are being interrogated as to their value and ideals, it’s sickening.

To me queerness is all-encompassing understanding, community, and evolution. Conversations around gender and identity are vitally important to safety and mental clarity and understanding the non-linear social construct of gender is vital to the centre of queer discussions. Quite often we forget the ‘in-between’, even within Trans individuals there is this troubling ideology of needing to be ‘one or the other’.

My practice is a highlighting of the in-between and how fatness and creativity impact that non-linear gender journey.

What would be your dream project or collaboration?

I was actually asked this recently and I feel I fumbled my answer, so I feel it’s best this time to split the scenario into actionable goals that are realistically achievable, though they may be wishful thinking and dreamed up concoctions that perhaps I’d simply turn to dust if they came to fruition.

So with that in mind, number one is a runway collection with beautiful queer fat bodies wearing my creations. I’d also say The Huxleys or Sophie Chalk for photographic collaborations, and I’d love to finally head up a small theatre show featuring myself and other in my textile creations with unique storytelling elements, these I feel I can speak into existence.

Maybe for the wild one I’d say, some sort of collaboration with Yayoi Kasuma, anything she touches is gold in my eyes.