Thought forms from the queer utopia imaginarium

Lucy Chetcuti Thought forms from the queer utopia imaginarium

6 - 29 August 2026

Opening Celebration: Saturday, 8 August 5:30- 7:30 PM

Artist Talk: Saturday 15 August 3 PM

Sydney Fringe Festival: Ignite, 29 August, featuring Genie Stuart, a producer and performer from Ngunnawal/Ngunawal/Ngambri Country. This live, durational performance takes Chetcuti's utopian paintings as a departure point for exploring how sound might construct a utopia within shared space. Found speakers and radios positioned throughout the space invite audiences to move through and within the work at their own pace. Woven through the work are frequencies — 174 Hz, 528 Hz, 432 Hz — each purportedly associated with somatic and restorative effects. Stuart uses live electronics and oboe to rehearse, through sound, an embodied utopia.

Stanley Street Gallery is excited to be presenting Lucy Chetcuti’s debut solo exhibition in Sydney, Thought forms from the queer utopia imaginarium. These vivid, abstract paintings are inspired by tree canopies, seen through the eyes of a queer person searching for hope, joy, beauty, intimacy, community and connection. The works are an expression of a deeply personal inner world, coded in the language of abstraction. Cultivating a utopian vision for the future, nurturing it, and sharing it is just one small step in the work that must be done.

Thought forms from the queer utopia imaginarium is an exhibition of imaginative new works that arise in a complex and dystopian time. These horrors are not new to many people, there is a heightened awareness that the structures holding the Western world together are failing now more than ever. In order to fight for a better world, we must first imagine that another world is possible. This requires creativity, hope, and determination. Queer Utopianism is not merely fantasy or escapism, it's a socio-political tool which inspires change.

“We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created.”

— Audre Lorde

Lucy Chetcuti is a multidisciplinary artist based in Kamberri/Canberra, working across painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, and monotyping. Her practice is grounded in a deep engagement with queer-ecology, using the natural world as both subject and framework to explore queerness, identity, and belonging. Queer relationality and intimacy are at the centre of her practice.

Lucy's visual language is experimental and intuitive. She uses colour, texture and material to evoke emotion and memory, often creating works that sit between the personal and the universal. Recent explorations into monotyping have expanded her practice further, allowing for improvisation and immediacy in her mark-making.