Responsibilities to Time is an ongoing project that stems from Callum McGrath’s research into public memorials dedicated to queer subjects and communities. Framed by a number of key queer theoretical texts, this project sees McGrath question how queer history and queer collective memory requires unconventional approaches to archival organisation. Arranged into an anonymous family photo-album, this experimental museological presentation works against the grain of linear archival organisation and critiques the structures that support established historiography. In breaking with these normalised practices, McGrath’s project forms part of an endeavour to re-conceive time in a way where queer love, loss and desire is prioritised over hereto-dominant modes, and asks us to consider an expanded notion of lineage, heritage and history.

Callum McGrath, Responsibilities to Time, 2021, digital photographic prints on found photo album pages, 24 parts, 29 x 32 cm each. 3 tables, rose pink and clear acrylic Perspex, powder coated aluminium, MDF, 102x820x800cm. 

Exhibited in To resound, unbound 2021 at the Centre for Contemporary Photography Melbourne. Curated Jack Willet. 

Images: J Forsyth