What is the cost of canons being established quickly and by large galleries? Do hegemonic institutions, including the academy, thereby centre themselves in the rescue, preservation, and study of grassroots oppositional work? Has “queer” become a marker of coherence and stability, another product label in the culture industry, rather than a radical challenge? Do monographic exhibitions and the ironically late celebration of singular prize-winning artists obscure the political and community context that vitally informed such practices? To what extent is the culture of memorialisation also one of erasure? And what might come of a return to the emergence of queer art in Britain at the end of the 1980s, of an examination of and reinvestment in the grassroots and community structures that sustained it? How has working with “queer” in institutional contexts changed or shifted since the late 1980s, and what are the insights and possibilities for institutional work now? Is there potential in this earlier moment, its varied politics and investments, that remains unrealised or undetonated? If all the present moment can yield is the celebration and canonisation of a chosen few artists, is it not a betrayal of the past and its politics, a foreclosure of the disruption and disobedience that “queer” once seemed to promise?

This conversation piece feature draws together a group of contributors to respond to these provocations and includes responses from Pratibha Parmar, Simon Watney, Topher Campbell, Seán Kissane, Owen G. Parry, Campbell X, Helena Reckitt, Dominic Johnson, Michael Petry, Irene Revell and Sunil Gupta.