Milestone | William Yang
Image: Victor Frankowski
Image: William Yang
Evocative, charming and poignant, William Yang’s Milestone is one of the rare shows I can describe as both a privilege to see and a joyful, mind-expanding experience; I left at the end wishing I could stay longer and hear more stories. William Yang is one of Australia’s most beloved and well-known photographers and writers. A queer icon and influencer of the cultural zeitgeist, he has captured some of Australia’s most important historical movements in a career spanning from the 1960s to the present. Milestone is his life story, presented in spoken word with orchestral and photographic accompaniment. And at 82, he had a lot to share with us.
Yang’s story began in the small Atherton Tablelands town of Dimbula, a railway siding town where he and his siblings grew up surrounded by farms and the bush. Much of his story revolved around returning to home and finding home, both in places and people. He recounted his struggles with racism and his Chinese Australian identity, highlighting his mother’s wish for him to be ‘more Australian than the Australians’ as a child and his early, competitive relationships with his siblings.
His later contributions to art and queer culture were interspersed with stories that continued to explore his Chinese heritage as an adult, including a family murder that showed the corruption of the justice system at the time, and his work and travels in China, exploring his cultural roots. These stories sat alongside his photos as a “social photographer” in the Sydney queer and arts scene, and the audience was enthralled for the entire show. Yang was both part of and documented these communities in one their most exciting coming of age periods of the 1970s and ’80s, including the start of Mardi Gras, gay rights protests, and the burgeoning rock music scene. Some parts of these stories were confronting, especially his documentation of friends’ declines during the AIDS epidemic, and the grief of losing his family members as he aged.
The orchestral music, composed by Elena Kats-Chernin and performed by the Queensland Concert Orchestra, spanned from dainty, short interludes to soaring melodies that fit the emotional stories being told with ease. The Concert Hall at QPAC was an excellent venue for this show, with the raised stage and background screen giving Yang’s art the gravitas it deserved and allowing the audience to watch the orchestra as they played. The lighting was kept simple and minimalist: a spotlight shone on whoever was in focus. Otherwise, the staging was bare. The story was told through image, words and song.
As he regaled the audience with stories of his life that were both laugh out loud funny and poignant in turn, these recurrent themes of home, identity, grief, love, and family were highlighted with wit and affection. The selected photographic works ranged from examinations of nature and self-portrait, to the homoerotic, and raised points about cultural preservation and the nature of consent and awareness that Yang also explored during the show.
Yang was poised in his delivery and sparkling with wit. As a lover of an interval in a show, I can understand why the choice was made not to include one; the spell he held over the audience might break. My only critique is that the show was one night only—I wish there were more shows in Brisbane. If he comes this way again, I will tell anyone who loves art, history, the celebration and exploration of queerness and Australiana to go see Milestone or its other iterations. This show is both art and heritage preservation, and a joy to watch.
