Image: Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland
Frances Libeau will present ‘AS LOYAL KIWIS WE CANNOT DESIRE’, a new multimedia installation examining the passage of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Homosexual Law Reform Act in 1986. The project will be the final presentation in The Changing Room’s 2026 programme and will be shown at Gus Fisher Gallery in Auckland from 26 September to 12 December 2026.
The installation combines sculpture with audiovisual remediation of archival material. It focuses on the opposition the bill faced before its enactment, including a petition organised by the Coalition of Concerned Citizens (CCC), identified by the gallery as a conservative Christian group. Libeau’s research follows the ways that political and cultural rhetoric circulated through broadcasts, petitions and written letters, alongside queer oral histories, organising and physical acts of resistance.
The work draws on institutional and personal archival records and technologies to consider what the gallery describes as the material histories of ideological transmission connected to the Law Reform. Rather than presenting the legislative history solely through official records, Libeau places governmental communication alongside forms of queer knowledge and collective action.
The project also has an autobiographical dimension. Libeau was raised in the same Auckland suburb as CCC founders and property entrepreneurs Keith Hay and Bill Subritzky. The artist’s enquiry addresses the legacy of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Christian moral right and its relationship to what the gallery calls the nationalistic imperatives of colonial capitalism. It further examines the heteronormative idea of “home” in Aotearoa and the ways queer bodies and queer desire have challenged that idea.
Libeau is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in Tāmaki Makaurau. The gallery says their practice often explores the hauntological potential of found materials and ways of queering compositional and archival practices. Recent exhibitions listed by the institution include ‘Lake of Wandering Spirits’ at Te Tuhi in 2026 and ‘My cruel enemy grazes on my pain and feeds herself’ at RM Gallery & Project Space in 2024.
The Changing Room is a Gus Fisher Gallery initiative offering three exhibition opportunities each year to Aotearoa-based artists. The programme supports emerging to mid-career artists in developing newly commissioned projects and presenting experimental practices. The space was formerly used as a dressing room during the building’s broadcasting days and retains four heritage windows, terrazzo flooring and an antechamber. Libeau’s presentation is supported by The Chartwell Trust.
‘AS LOYAL KIWIS WE CANNOT DESIRE’ will open at The Changing Room, Gus Fisher Gallery, 74 Shortland Street, Auckland, with an event on Friday 25 September from 5:30 to 7:30pm. The exhibition continues through 12 December 2026; the gallery is open Tuesday to Friday from 10am to 5pm and Saturdays from 10am to 4pm.
