Sally Gray

Sally Gray’s curated exhibitions of art and fashion have been realised in London, Sydney, Beijing, Melbourne and regional Australia. Most recently she curated and presented the ‘Fashion Ideas’ public talks series for the exhibition ‘Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson: Step into Paradise’ at Powerhouse Museum, MAAS, Sydney (Oct 2019 - Feb 2020) and curated the exhibition ‘Don’t Forget to Remember’, also at  MAAS, about the creative collaboration of artist David McDiarmid and fashion designer Linda Jackson. She taught art and fashion history at UNSW and UTS, Sydney between 2005 and 2009 (also awarded PhD UNSW 2006; ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship UNSW 2010-12; Visiting Scholar in Cultural History UNSW 2013-15). Her scholarly publications cover late twentieth-century intersections between art, fashion, sexual politics and the culture of cities. Her book Friends, Fashion and Fabulousness: The Making of an Australian Style (2017) went into a second printing in July 2019. Sally moved to Melbourne in January 2019 where her research combines the conceptual threads of previously published work and the concerns of the feminist ‘second wave’. Her principal body of creative work, aside from academic work, has involved the generation and management of a great range of cultural projects through the ongoing arts consultancy she established in Sydney in May 1994.

Profile image: Linda Jackson design, Flamingo Park parade, Jamison Street nightclub, Sydney, 1981 Photograph: William Yang.

relevant publications

Books and exhibition catalogues:

Sally Gray (2019 [2017]) Friends, Fashion and Fabulousness: The Making of an Australian Style Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne

Sally Gray (2016) Hand and Heart Shall Never Part: The Fashion Collaboration of Linda Jackson and David McDiarmid, Wollongong Art Gallery, Wollongong

Sally Gray (Ed) (2014) David McDiarmid: When This You See Remember Me, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Sally Gray and Dan Rule (2014) Gifts from David McDiarmid, Perimeter Books, Melbourne.

Sally Gray (2012) The Full Spectrum: David McDiarmid’s Rainbow Aphorisms, Project Sisu Publications, Sydney.

Refereed journal articles, catalogue essays, encyclopedia entries, reviews 

Sally Gray (2020) ‘Asia-chic in 1970s Australian Fashion: The Case of Clarence Chai’ in  Margaret Maynard (Ed.) Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion Vol 7, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands

Sally Gray (2019) “David McDiarmid”, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 2019, biography of Australian artist, designer and gay activist David McDiarmid http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mcdiarmid-david-ross-27121

Sally Gray (2018) “Experimental Fashion: Performance Art, Carnival and the Grotesque Body”, by Francesca Granata (2016), book review Studies in Costume and Performance, Volume 3, Number 1 pp135-138 on-line 23.5.18 

Sally Gray and Roger Leong (2017) “Guest Editors’ Introduction”, in Sally Gray and Roger Leong (Eds) Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion # 4.2, special issue on ‘Exhibiting Masculinity’, Intellect, April 2017

Sally Gray (2017) “Faith Fashion Fusion: Muslim Women’s Style in Australia, exhibition review”, Fashion Theory, Bloomsbury on-line January 2017

Sally Gray (2016) “Material Shift: ‘200 Years of Australian Fashion’ at NGV”, exhibition review, Art Monthly Australasia, June/July 2016

Sally Gray (2016) “Tully, Peter Craig (1947–1992)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/tully-peter-craig-16280/text28222, published online 2016 

Sally Gray (2015) Fashion victims? How clothes took over our art galleries, The Conversation 13 November 2014

Sally Gray (2015) “Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty at the V&A”, exhibition review in Broadsheet Contemporary Visual Art + Culture 44.2

Sally Gray (2015) “Cultural Freight: ‘Fashion Icons’ in Adelaide”, exhibition review, Art Monthly Australia, Number 277, March 2015, pp 54-56

Sally Gray (2014) “Supported from the Shoulders: Structure and Plane”, catalogue essay, “Silly Canvas” exhibition, Utopian Slumps Gallery, Melbourne, December 2014

Sally Gray (2012) “Relational Craft and Australian Fashionability in the 1970s-1980s: Friends, Pathways, Ideas and Aesthetics”, in Craft +Design Enquiry Vol 4 2012, Canberra.

Sally Gray (2012) “Linda Jackson: Bush Couture”, exhibition review, Art Monthly Australia, April 2012

Sally Gray (2011) “Contemporary Japanese Fashion: The Gene Sherman Collection”, exhibition review, Fashion Theory (15:3 Sept 2011) Berg, Oxford and New York

Sally Gray (2011) “The Berg Encyclopedia of World Fashion and Dress, Vol 4., South and South East Asia”, book review, Fashion Theory (16:1, March 2012) Berg, Oxford and New York

Sally Gray (2011) “Queering Sydney: The ‘Art and Fashion Queens’”, Art Monthly Australia Issue 242, August 2011 Sydney

Sally Gray (2011) “Ballets Russes: The Art of Costume”, exhibition review, The Journal of Modern Craft (4:2 July 2011), Berg, Oxford and New York

Sally Gray (2011) “Mixing it up: Art, Fashion, Politics and Music”, NGV Gallery magazine, July/August 2011 NGV publications.

Sally Gray (2011) “David McDiarmid, Peter Tully and the ecstatic space of the Paradise Garage” in Glenn Adamson and Jane Pavitt (Eds) Postmodernism Style and Subversion 1970 – 1990 V&A Publications London

Sally Gray (2010) “Crafting Hip and Cool: David McDiarmid’s Handcrafted Lamb Suede Dancefloor Outfits, 1980–1989”, The Journal of Modern Craft (3:1 March 2010) pp. 37–54

Sally Gray (2009) “Black in Fashion: From Mourning to Night”, exhibition review, Fashion Theory (13: 4 December 2009), Berg, Oxford and New York pp531-540.

Sally Gray (2009) “Remaking Fashion”, exhibition review, Art Monthly Australia, March

Sally Gray (2008) “I’m here Girlfriend What’s New? Art, Dress and the Queer Performative Subject: The Case of David McDiarmid”, Fashion Theory, (12:3 September 2008). Berg, Oxford and New York, pp 293-312.2009

Sally Gray (2008) “Africa, America, Britain, Australia: A Journey in Textiles”, Wollongong City Gallery, Feb 2008.

Sally Gray (2008) “Super Bodies: Heroic Fashion of the 1980s”, exhibition review, Art Monthly Australia, December 2007- February 2008.

Sally Gray (2007) “Reinterpreting a Textile Tradition – David McDiarmid’s ‘Klub Kwilt’”, Textile History, The Journal of the Pasold Research Fund (38: 2 November 2007) pp198-210.

Sally Gray (2007) “[You Make me Feel] Mighty Real: David McDiarmid’s Art and the Space Within [the] House”. Queer Space: Centres and Peripheries conference, (Eds Naomi Stead, Jason Prior) UTS Sydney, February 20-21 2007.

Sally Gray (2006) “Queer Space: The Case of the Paradise Garage”, in T. McMinn, J. Stephens, and S. Basson (Eds,) Contested Terrains, Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand Annual Conference Fremantle, 2006.

Sally Gray (1999) “Celebrating Hybridity: David McDiarmid’s textile designs”, Art and Australia, 33:1 Sept/ Oct/Nov1999.

Sally Gray (1998) “Designing Australia: Modernity and the Stamp”, Australia Post Postmaster Gallery, Melbourne, April 1998.

Sally Gray (1995) “From Taffeta to Tanami”, Linda Jackson at Twenty-Four Hour Art Gallery, Darwin, December 1995.