Midsumma is an annual lesbian and gay festival held during January and February in Melbourne, Australia.
Each year over 80,000 individuals across Melbourne and Australia participate in and attend Midsumma Festival events.
Midsumma Festival is rated a Major Event by Tourism Victoria and the City of Melbourne. The festival is identified globally as one of the top five gay and lesbian arts and cultural celebrations, along with New York, San Francisco, Vancouver and Sydney.
Previous events have included Summa Cabaret which featured Hugh Jackman, Geraldine Turner, and the ensembles Combo Fiasco and The Great Big Opera Company.
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The festival opens with Carnival on 17 January, a day-long celebration in the City of Melbourne providing access to both gay and mainstream communities to picnic with family and friends as well as engage with community groups and browse the commercial stallholders. The festivities continue long into the night with T Dance – one of Melbourne’s largest outdoor dance parties – featuring some of Melbourne’s and Australia’s most popular DJs.
Midsumma’s visual arts program features a range of exhibitions in and around Melbourne from emerging & established local, national and international gay artists. Yarra Arts and Queer City play home to many of the exhibitions.
Midsumma also produces Australia’s only gay short play competition, Pink Shorts, a collaborative project engaging theatre veterans and drama newcomers to bring new short works to the Melbourne stage. The festival’s performing arts program includes a range of musicals, theatre, cabaret, film, spoken word, music events and dance parties. These performing arts events are largely produced by the community.
Gay Melbourne’s single largest event, Carnival, will again open the 2010 Midsumma Festival; held in Alexandra Gardens with stalls, food, and main stage of showcase entertainment taking place through the commitment of Midsumma’s principal partner, the City of Melbourne.
The main stage will include a selection of entertainment from the festival program, Luke Gallagher and Dolly Diamond, Anthony Manchetti, Hannah Gadsby and Adam Richard, and The Classics.
Eagle Pack will again present Duclie’s Dog Show – a Midsumma Carnival institution – which will sure to provide hilarious high camp fun and frivolity with categories including “cutest bitch” and “best owner and dog combo”.
The day will close with T Dance, Midsumma’s dance party under the stars, co-presented by The Market Hotel and will feature international headline acts DJ Paul Heron and Inaya Day.
Queer City is the collaboration between City of Melbourne, Arts Victoria, Midsumma, local galleries and artists from the queer community including a breathtaking exhibition of Vivien St James’ work, a celebration of fluid or ‘unstable’ gender at Platform Space, as well as exhibitions at Guilford Lane Gallery and fortyfive downstairs.
Re/Gendered brings together a number of high profile international and Australian artists in a group exhibition that celebrates the notion of fluid or 'unstable' gender, striving to transgress and blur the boundaries of gender performance.
Queer City will launch on Monday 18 January at City Library before moving to fortyfive downstairs and ending with the after-party at Loop Bar and includes many more exhibits exploring and celebrating gay culture.
Yarra Arts is the collaboration between the City of Yarra, Arts Victoria, Midsumma, local galleries and artists from the queer community, featuring an exclusive premier event from T.J. Bateson, a magnificent group show, TransMasculinities, which explores aspects of gender, as well as a range of work at 69 Smith Street.
T.J.Bateson’s new body of work, Veiled In Plain Sight, has been made specifically for Midsumma and the relaunch of Tacit Contemporary Art in Abbotsford.
Off the back of Transmen Translated in 2008, artist and curator Jesslyn Moss presents TransMasculinities, a major Midsumma group show featuring photography, painting, drawing and video by eight artists from Australia, the UK and the United States.
This exhibition explores new models of masculinity and offers a rare insight into the physical and psychological aspects of transgender butch, gender queer and transmasculine experiences, and is shown at Red Gallery.
69 Smith Street will feature work from Benja, Mark Bareald, Gary Campbell, J. Kristensen, Piepke, Mel Simpson and Rat Simpson which includes concepts ranging from identity, relationship and material assumptions through photography, and even playful work which portrays women’s relationships with each other and the open road.
Yarra Arts is launched on Wednesday 20 January at 69 Smith Street Gallery.
Midsumma Festival 2011 from 16 January until February 6.