Jeremy Smith PRINT – Gaybourhood Bubbles of Sydney, 2023-2025

In the 2016 census, one in ten gay men in a same-sex relationship lived within two kilometres of Taylor Square, the heart of Sydney’s historic gay village. Of the top 20 Australian suburbs with the highest proportion of same-sex couples, eighteen cluster within a few kilometres of Central Station. ‘Gaybourhood Bubbles of Sydney’ transforms this data into a poetic, political, and personal map of queer life in the city. Styled after a 16th-century double-hemisphere world map, the work presents two 3 km-wide “bubbles”: The inner-east “Old World”, radiating from the Progress Pride Flag at Taylor Square, grounded in decades of activism, visibility, and nightlife. The inner-west “New World”, spreading from Newtown’s Pride Beacon, known for its intersectional, artistic, and community-driven queer culture.