Make a Scene: Fashion, Freedom and the Brisbane Underground

Make a Scene is a free exhibition at Queensland Museum Kurilpa, Level 2, South Bank, Brisbane. On now until 19 July 2026.

In 1991 Queensland decriminalised homosexuality. It had taken years of protest, activism and courage to get there. For a community that had long been pushed to the margins, the clubs and dance floors of Brisbane became some of the first places where that freedom could actually be felt.

Clothing was part of that story. What you wore on a dance floor in early 1990s Brisbane was not just a fashion choice. It was identity made visible. After years of having to disappear, dressing with intention was its own form of protest. Make a Scene at Queensland Museum Kurilpa brings those clothes and the stories behind them back into the light.

These were not just places to party. In the years surrounding decriminalisation, when being visibly queer still carried real risk, the club was one of the only places where you could exist fully and openly. For a lot of people it was the first place they felt they belonged. Before family accepted them. Before workplaces were safe. Before the law fully caught up. The dance floor came first.

That context gives the exhibition its real weight. It is documenting survival, solidarity and the construction of community in conditions that were genuinely hostile. The clothes, the music, the spaces, all of it was doing serious social work dressed up as a night out.

When those hard-won rights are still being debated and challenged in parts of the world, this history is not just interesting. It is important.

Brisbane itself is part of the story. Often written off as culturally conservative in this era, the city appears differently here. Rave culture, drag, underground fashion, protest, experimental performance. Fortitude Valley less backdrop than participant.

The exhibition’s community-led approach is what gives it authority. This is not institutional history speaking down to its subjects. It is history shaped by the people who were there.

What lingers is how much invention happened in spaces dismissed as just nightlife. Make a Scene argues otherwise. These were places where people were building aesthetics, politics and futures before anyone gave them permission to.

It is an exhibition about queer culture. But it is also about what scenes do. They make room for people before the wider culture does.