Ballarat Frolic Festival's art show returns this weekend ahead of the festival's launch next month.
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The art show will follow the festival's move to a darker, edgier theme with Frolic Dark Rainbow and showcase some of Ballarat and the Goldfields region's best LGBTQI+ artists.
This is the fifth time Frolic Festival has run an art show, but the first time it has been hosted at the Art Gallery of Ballarat's Backspace gallery.
While much of the festival is performance-based, Frolic Dark Rainbow art and literature director Sarah Hart said the art show was a 'quieter, more contemplative approach to art making'.
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"We really appreciate, in the shows that we put on, the vulnerability of the artists who submit," she said.
"It's a little bit different, I think, putting together a show which is so linked to identity and so when you're putting your work on the walls, you really putting a bit of yourself on the walls and we love to see that out and proud for a solid month, it's just wonderful."
Ms Hart said the Dark Rainbow theme harnesses some of the negativity created last year through the COVID-19 pandemic and the festival's winter timing.
"We thought we'd just harness that and talk about some of the darkness that comes with identifying as LGBTQI+," she said.
"It's not all happy rainbows and marriage equality, there's a lot of emotion, there's a lot of trauma, there's a lot of working through your place in the world and so we wanted to see a bit of that in the exhibition and we think the artists have 100 per cent delivered."
Artist Yasmin Mata painted her piece Chameleon specifically for the festival's exhibition said it represented adaptation.
"This piece represents that sort of hiding in the shadows but then kind of coming out and learning to adapt to survive just like the chameleon does," she said.
"It was more about bringing out that that darkness, that other side that's not all fluffy and she, I think, makes a really good piece and it's really good to be involved with Backspace and the Art Gallery of Ballarat."
The Frolic Art Show is open 10am to 5pm daily until June 20 at the Art Gallery of Ballarat's Backspace gallery.
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