For two decades, Gemma Rolls-Bentley has been at the forefront of driving much-needed change in contemporary art. In a world where the work of queer artists has long been misframed, underrepresented and undervalued, Gemma has passionately worked to provide a platform for diversity in art — spaces where queer art, in its various forms, can be celebrated and amplified. From her much-loved book, Queer Art: From canvas to club, and the spaces between, to the Brighton Beacon Collection, the largest permanent display of queer art in the UK, Gemma’s work has been vital in spotlighting art that explores LGBTQIA+ identity.

In celebration of Pride 2025, we’ve partnered with Gemma to curate window displays of artists featured in her book, with gallery installations in London Covent Garden, Brighton and Manchester. We sat down with the curator, writer and creative consultant for an in-depth discussion, delving into her curatorial practice, her critically-acclaimed book and the importance of amplifying queer art.

You’ve been at the forefront of art for two decades, constantly moving the needle through your various projects, from the Brighton Beacon Collection, the largest permanent display of queer art in the UK, to your critically-acclaimed book, Queer Art: From canvas to club, and the spaces between. What started your love of the art world, and who were the artists that really spoke to you during this time?

It was actually my granny who really inspired my love of art early on. She had gone to art school in the fifties and was just super open minded and accepting, taking me to galleries in Sheffield when I was young. It took me quite a long time to find the artists who really spoke to me, because a lot of the stuff I was seeing in the mainstream – I loved it, I loved the skills and the craft of it, I loved some of the political histories – but the work didn’t always feel super relevant to me, and I think a lot of that is that art history hasn’t celebrated queer stories, women’s stories, diverse stories. Which is wild, as art has often been one of the key ways that oppressed people and marginalised communities have expressed themselves and found a voice.

When I first came out in my early twenties, I was definitely looking for reference points within the art world — and once I looked, I found them. One of the artists I felt really connected to early on was Catherine Opie, who I’ve gone onto work with now on various things. She was taking photos in the nineties of lesbians, leather daddies, dykes on bikes, and seeing her work exhibited in museums and commercial galleries blew my mind, as that was a subculture I wanted to be a part of — or was a part of — being represented and celebrated in mainstream art spaces. Since that period in the last twenty years or so, we’ve seen a gradual shift, and now, they’re so many places where you can go to see brilliant exhibitions by queer artists — not least the Leigh Bowery exhibition at Tate Modern, which has ended up being a blockbuster show. It’s absolutely brilliant — it’s all about queer nightlife and the figures that’ve inspired so many people.

I’ve just spent the weekend with the British painter Maggi Hambling, another artist that I learned about early on; it wasn’t until later I realised she was a lesbian and was painting her lovers. She’s also painted Oscar Wilde a lot, as well as created the monument to Oscar Wilde in Central London. She’s very much an important queer figure who has lived her life unapologetically — a real hero of mine. I’ve just curated an exhibition of hers at Wolterton Hall in Norfolk, and we had a launch party this weekend. So yeah, I have lots of pinch myself moments, where the artists who have really impacted my life I’ve had the privilege to work with.

Your book, Queer Art: From canvas to club, and the spaces between, represents a much-needed platform for queer art, something that has long been underrepresented and misframed. After spending decades curating art, what sparked the idea for you to create your own book?

Well honestly, it was because people kept asking me “what would be a good book to buy as an introduction to queer art?”. I just couldn’t find anything that felt accessible and something that anybody could pick up and read. I wanted a book that any queer person, whether they know about art or are engaged with the art world or not, could pick up and see themselves reflected in. But I also wanted a book that people outside of the community could pick up and gain a better understanding of queer and trans experiences. When a publisher approached me about doing a book, I knew exactly what I wanted the book to be: I wanted it to be something that was beautiful, joyful, but also considered how art has spoken to some of the challenges we have faced, and continue to face, as a community.

Rather than curating your book chronologically, you instead took a thematic approach, something that you’ve mentioned enables everyone to interact with it. Why is positioning the art in your book in this way important to you?

I quite deliberately didn’t make the book chronological, which is typically how art history books are formatted, because I wanted to create dialogues through time and space. By putting a younger artist next to someone who was making their art forty years ago, you can then form a bond with those people. When you look at the work you can then think, “yes, I’ve got something in common with the older generation”, so I think it can help strengthen those bonds and give greater understanding on things that we don’t remember, but are still relevant to us as they affect our broader community.

You know, I didn’t want it to feel boring, I wanted it to feel like a really sexy coffee table book that anyone could dip in and out of or pick up and discover something new, or see an artist they already knew framed in this way. For example, there are lots of artists in this book that people will have heard of, like David Hockney, Francis Bacon, Robert Indiana — all gay men who have become globally recognised artists. All of those artists have created very queer work, some more explicitly than others. In the case of David Hockney, he was making etchings of two boys in bed together in the 1960s, and yet, art history has not focused on the queerness in the work. I think sometimes if it isn’t framed in that way, you might miss the opportunity to see yourself reflected in the work. So putting artists like that alongside younger artists, who are perhaps known in the queer community but not in a broader art community, is really important, as applying that queer lens can suddenly make their work feel relevant to a younger group of people.

I wanted to touch upon how your book represents much more than just the gallery-centric view of art, with queer lived experiences — from protests to dancefloors — being celebrated and spotlighted. How important is it for you to showcase these lived experiences and move away from the often exclusive, limiting view of gallery art?

When you’re thinking about the history of queer art, you have to think outside of the gallery. Typically, a lot of queer artists have not had the opportunity to see their work in galleries or museums. A lot of them have, as we mentioned, but a lot of it hasn’t been framed with regards to its queerness. There are lots of artists whose work existed outside of those mainstream art spaces. Like the club, for example, which has been a hotbed for queer creativity, whether you’re thinking about performances, costumes, posters — a lot of really brilliant and important queer art has come out of those spaces. A lot of it does tend to bleed over into the mainstream now – for example, Leigh Bowery at the Tate, which feels like a landmark moment. But through history, that art hasn’t always been in the mainstream.

Then similarly, with the street and protest, I think a really key example is the ACT UP movement, who were formed in response to the HIV/AIDS crisis and the neglect to care for people and the failings of governments to support those dying of this terrible disease. Out of the ACT UP movement, lots of different artists and collectives were formed, like Gran Fury and Fierce Pussy. They did performances, they made posters; there’s a lot of work from that period that really borrows from the formal language of marketing and advertising, but it’s not pushing heteronormative, restrictive ideas, systems or products — instead it’s presenting new possibilities and advocating for acceptance.

The same can be said today, a lot of queer artists tend to use Instagram as their platform and different social media to share their work with people. There’s a Nigerian artist making NFTs and crypto art in the book, and his art can travel and be seen all around the world, because it’s digital. That’s really interesting to think about as well. Queer art is expansive in its nature and therefore we should be expansive in the way we consider it.

Touching upon these real, lived experiences, you also curated Dreaming of Home at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, which centered around varying notions of queer and trans domesticity. Can you touch upon why art that showcases life in these intimate contexts is so important?

That was a wonderful opportunity to work on that exhibition in New York, which ended up being a landmark exhibition. The show was called Dreaming of Home, and the starting point for the show was a 1993 image by Catherine Opie, which shows a childlike drawing of two stick figures with dresses and a house, cut into someone’s back. To me, this is an extremely powerful work, as it really articulates the potential tension between dreams of home and the pain of the queer experience. So I brought together a group of contemporary artists who also consider home, to show alongside that image of Cathy’s. What’s interesting is that it’s not really about domesticity — that can be part of that conversation around home — but very often it’s about finding family, forming chosen family and finding new communities that accept you the way you are. Migration can be a big part of the story, too — people having to move and live somewhere where they can live more freely. Or, thinking about our bodies — being able to feel at home and safe in our bodies as queer and trans people.

There was work in the show that thinks about queer and trans futures; there was work in the show that thinks about how we might form our sense of self in the context of the home that we build for ourselves, versus the home we were raised in. But then there were also some quite banal scenes of homelife, like a painting by Jenna Gribbon of her wife on the couch, with a hot water bottle on her belly when she’s got period cramps. Queer people just live their lives, and it’s important to remember that too.

With our project, you’ve curated three artists to be displayed in windows in London, Manchester and Brighton in celebration of Pride 2025. What was your approach to selecting the artists and why does their work particularly resonate with you?

All three of them are absolutely brilliant artists and I admire them greatly. I think that, as with many of the artists in my book, Sola, Jonathan and Ajamu are very successful in articulating queer joy and creating space for people to celebrate themselves, but also in acknowledgement of some of the challenges that we might face as a community or, some of the more difficult topics that come up as we discover and explore our own identities and desires. All three artists are British and UK-based, and they’re all working in different formats.

You also work closely with akt, a charity that we’re supporting as part of our Pride 2025 celebration. Can you speak about your work with akt and how vital this charity is for LGBTQIA+ young people?

akt is the only charity in the UK who work with queer and trans people, who are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of becoming homeless. The work they do is vital, particularly in this increasingly hostile environment for queer and trans people, but particularly trans people. We are relying on charities to do the work where public services are not delivering everything that is needed. I’ve been a supporter of the charity for quite a while now. Last year, I helped set up a non-profit organisation called Cardion Arts that works with queer and trans artists, as well as produces a programme of events that create a sense of belonging for the LGBTQIA+ community — with all of our events and exhibitions fundraising for akt. For example, there is an exhibition that opens in London on the 4th of July and runs for the whole summer, and the exhibition is showing 20 queer and trans artists. Its title is Talisman, bringing together work that explores the symbols, objects and people we turn to to keep us safe, and the funds from any work sold in that exhibition will be donated to akt. I also curated a performance night at ICA London earlier this year, where we raised a big chunk of money for akt. It’s a really valuable charity and I would encourage anyone to look at their work and think about how they might be able to support them, and also to come and see the exhibition at Bankside called the Talisman.

Are there any upcoming projects that you’re excited for that you’d like to talk about?

Talisman is a big one, as it’s on in London for several weeks so lots of people will be able to see it. The art included is amazing, we’ve got leading artists like Lubaina Himid, who will represent Britain at the Venice Biennale next year, or Jesse Darling, who won the Turner Prize last year. There’s also lots of early career artists that people may not have heard of that are making really important, brilliant work.

I’ve also just co-curated the exhibition I mentioned with Maggi Hambling — it’s a two-artist show alongside Ro Robertson. That exhibition is called Sea State and is held at Wolterton, which is a beautiful stately home located in Norfolk, and is running until December. I’ve also just finished writing another book which is coming out next year, so people can watch this space for that. I’ve actually got more exhibitions coming up this year, one in Amsterdam and one in New York, but the best way to stay up to date with what I’m doing is to follow me on Instagram.