Welcome to Archer’s Queer Fashion Files! Each month, we’ll interview trendsetters and tastemakers, showcasing the diversity and talent of the fashion world. You can check out all episodes of our Queer Fashion Files here.

In Episode 13, Hailey Moroney chats to The Huxleys about ‘The Winner Takes It All’, a large-scale participatory event and photoshoot, presented by Melbourne Fringe Festival. With this event, The Huxleys invite ordinary citizens en masse from the LGBTQIA+ community and their allies to enter a domain that they may have long dreamed of, but may never have been comfortable participating in – the realm of competitive sports.

Will and Garrett Huxley are Melbourne-based collaborative performance and visual artists. They are lovers who joined forces and share a surname as a moniker in support of queer love.

The Huxleys are a dynamic duo of cataclysmic proportion who present camp spectacle and disco-enthused wizardry across the visual art, performance and entertainment realms. Their photography and performance art traverses the classifications of costume, film and recording. A visual assault of sparkle, surrealism and the absurd, The Huxleys saturate their practice and projects with a glamorous, androgynous freedom which sets out to bring some escapism and magic to everyday life.

All images by: The Huxleys (Will & Garrett)

Hailey Moroney: Will and Garrett! Hi! It’s been a minute since our last chat, so welcome back! Since we last spoke, you’ve birthed a new creative endeavour – a queer takeover of the sporting world. Can you tell our readers how this concept developed into the project ‘The Winner Takes It All’?

The Huxleys: Both of us grew up tormented by sports. As queer kids at odds with the competitive athleticism that often dominates our culture, we felt like giant abstractions, obstacles to motion. Constantly bullied, yelled at, picked last, and humiliated.

Team sports were the worst – they were often gendered, and groups of boys together can be so mean and even the gym teachers could be assholes. It was always the thing we dreaded most in school.

Sport continues to dominate our culture – you only need to look at the newspapers and the TV news to see the incredible space devoted to sports. Meanwhile, you’re lucky if there is even one page about arts and culture. We don’t want to take anything away from people who love sports, but we wish there was an equal love and celebration of arts and culture in Australia.

We’ve always felt distressed by this imbalance. We thought that when your artistic pursuit is of very little importance to the culture around you, you must find a way to reconcile these disparate paths and put the art back in the sport.

For queer people at odds with sports, performance can be a way to feel like they can ‘play’ figuratively, creatively and physically, allowing the ridiculous feats of fashions on the field to be at one with your gloriously bent vision of the world. The Dadaist notion in full athletic prowess. A giant sequined ball lunges for the ball. Art imitating sport. Finally at peace with one another.

‘The Winner Takes It All’ is a way for us to make peace with the alienation and exclusion we felt growing up being forced to play sports. We are using humor and joy to bridge the worlds of sports and queer art together.

We are inviting anyone who’s ever dreamt of being a sports star or a sports failure (both equally celebrated) but, for any reason, has felt excluded from that world: come join us and embrace being glamorous, uncoordinated and fabulous on the field. It’s predominantly aimed at members of the LGBTIQA+ community to reclaim this space and have a wild time making art with us.

HM: We know the queers love a participatory event, as our community is what uplifts us and holds us together. I’m fascinated because I’ve yet to see a participatory event from photographers that invites anyone and everyone to take part in the process. Was inviting community – or “ordinary citizens en masse” – a foundation of the idea from the get-go?

TH: We started this project with photographs of ourselves and a few of our queer friends ‘performing’ sport. The photos are so fun, and they really capture the absurdity of trying to play sports dressed as a giant sequin alien, or a sparkly hot pink butt plug. It actually represents how you might feel trying to compete in that world. These images will be shown at the Museum of Australian Photography in September. They were the jumping off point for this project.

We generally just shoot ourselves; we rarely invite people into the chaotic and ridiculous process we undertake making images. There is so much trial-and-error, and it takes a long time with self-timers and running back and forth to check things like focus, framing and lighting. Especially when, in some costumes, you have no arms, no face and no vision!

But we wanted to challenge ourselves, and although the idea of inviting this many people into our process is terrifying, it’s also kind of thrilling to have this many like-minded people joining us to make a statement about sports.

We realised our story is far from unique – so many queer people have a complex relationship with sports. So, we thought: let’s tell the story together.

For us, hearing positive stories of sport is great, too – especially from a queer perspective. So there will be people joining us who actually love sports as much as we loathe sport! It’s a great balance. People will get to be part of making artworks, which is always fun! And they will all get a copy of a photo from the shoots.

HM: So many of us will identify with this experience from Garrett: “Sport highlighted my differences and made me an easy target for playground bullying, and so I spent 12 years of my life trying to get out of every sporting activity possible. A teacher once ordered the class to triple-jump into the sandpit. I refused to do it. My inner body temperature felt like 100 degrees because I was in the unwanted spotlight.”

Was developing this project empowering to reframe your relationship with sport – or did it come with some mental obstacles too?

Garrett Huxley: In team sports at school, I could often hide at the edges of the field and behind other players. But one day, I was asked to hop, skip and jump into a sandpit in front of the whole class.

I decided I had to stand my ground and refused, in a head-to-head with my toad of a PE teacher, and consequently got banned from sports for the rest of school. I got sent to the library. They didn’t know how to punish a queer kid like me. I got to read books and listen to my Walkman instead.

Will Huxley: In my experience, both my parents were athletic, and my mum was a sports champion, according to her! So they forced me to play sports right through high school, even though I was terrible and I hated it! I could never live up to their athletic prowess, so I was always the loser.

But eventually, we found other ways to win in life by being all the things we were told were wrong with us as kids: being effeminate, queer, strange and creative. We used to get called “poof” and “faggot” all the time growing up, and now we wear those names as badges of honour.

Our version of sport is disco-dancing in sequins.

Both: We actually both wrote short stories about our experiences growing up with the horror of sports and this was actually really therapeutic. We find that humour and art are the best things for us for undoing trauma or breaking through boundaries. They connect people and brings joy.

So using our art and our humour is a beautiful way to make peace with the conflict we felt with that competitive crazy sports culture. We also hope schools have changed somewhat since we were there. Maybe they are now easier on kids who are different and creative.

Hailey Moroney: Will you rest after this epic beast of a two-day event? Do The Huxleys ever rest? Is there another project on the horizon?

TH: We are actually off to Perth, Western Australia, in November for our first ever survey show at the Fremantle Arts Centre. It is very special, as Will grew up in the suburbs of Perth – it’s like a homecoming and a way to make peace with Perth, which is very tough when [Will] grew up as a weird, queer boy who never really fit in.

But now, it’s really special to be asked to come back and celebrate how this has become part of our artform.

And our next series will look at the incredible history of female artists that have inspired us across time, and making work honouring and celebrating these voices.

HM: Thank you both for creating joy, for being beacons of fantasy and light. To show young people in our community that they have the power to reframe their experiences and make their differences into their superpowers is such a gift. Only The Huxleys could make this into a spectacle event, too. Adore you both!

‘The Winner Takes It All’ will take place at Prahran Aquatic Centre, Princes Gardens Tennis Court and Malvern Cricket Ground in the City of Stonnington on 6 & 12 October at Melbourne Fringe Festival.

This project is supported by the City of Stonnington, Creative Victoria and the Broadtree Foundation. It also received Cash to Create through the Fringe Fund, with thanks to Monica Lim and Konfir Kabo.

Register for ‘The Winner Takes It All’ now.

You can stay up to date with Will Huxley and Garrett Huxley on Instagram.

If you want to pitch an idea for Archer’s Queer Fashion Files, email pitch@archermagazine.com.au with ‘QUEER FASHION FILES’ in the subject line. You can check out the rest of our Queer Fashion Files here.