Drew Pettifer

Associate Professor Drew Pettifer is Co-Convenor of the LGBTIQA+ Research Network and IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access) Lead in the School of Art.

Drew is a contemporary artist, writer, curator, and non-practicing lawyer. His research interests include the archive, queer theory, biopower, desire, gender, representation, and contemporary social politics. His creative practice works across photography, video, print, performance, and installation. In 2017 he was awarded one of five university-wide Vice Chancellor's Commendations for Doctoral Thesis Excellence at Monash University for his project examining contemporary representations of masculinity and the queer gaze. More recently his practice has operated at the nexus of creative practice, critical theory, and social justice, aiming to transform our understanding of Australian history by using creative practice to foreground critical queer histories which have been systematically excluded from dominant archives. In 2024 he was appointed a Visiting Scholar at the State Library of NSW to research the 'pink bans' of the 1970s and awarded a DSC Academic Development Program Fellowship to explore how creative practice might be used to fill in the gaps in hidden minoritarian histories.

Recent exhibitions of Drew's artwork include: Closer Together, Hong Kong Arts Centre (2024); Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria (2023); Forget Me Not: A queer end to the bushrangers, Sarah Scout Presents (2023); Queer, National Gallery of Victoria (2022); Too Much is Never Enough, Space Place Gallery, Russia (2021); XX, Hong Kong Arts Centre (2020-21); and,  A Sorrowful Act: The Wreck of the Zeewijk, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth (2020). His work is held in various collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia, Museum of Australian Photography, and City of Melbourne's Arts and Heritage Collection, as well as private collections nationally and internationally.

In addition to exhibitions and publications, Drew is regularly invited as a speaker, writer, and peer-reviewer on contemporary art, sexuality, and the body. He has been a peer reviewer for the Australia Council for the Arts (now Creative Australia) and City of Melbourne Arts and Culture. He has co-convened several interdisciplinary research symposiums and a conference, with topics spanning creative arts pedagogy, cultural inclusion, gender, and sexuality, bringing together researchers across the Asia-Pacific region. From 2020-2024 Drew was Program Lead of the Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) Hong Kong program, developing extensive links across the region.