Terra firma magazine and miłość gallery present ‘I’m so gay for you’, a group exhibition which accompanies the release of terra firma’s 9th issue of the same title, to open and launch on Valentine’s Day. 

‘I’m so gay for you’ is a celebration of queerness, care and communion, sex and camp, innuendo and ambiguity curated between miłość gallery and Sophie Willison of terra firma. Thirteen artists – Paul Arthur, Nic Bevers, Lucy Deverall, Gosia Kołdraszewska, The Lezbag & Polly Mortimer, Jan Możdżyński, Maite de Orbe, Maddy Rowley, Olivia Sterling, Rosie Thomas, Sophie Vallance Cantor, and Sophie Willison – present their takes on queer affection and joy in the media of photography, painting, collage, sculpture, print, jewellery and tapestry.


The exhibition presents a variety of responses to the theme of terra firma’s 9th issue ‘I’m so gay for you’ – the plurality of media and motifs highlight the uniqueness of queer experiences, putting together a review of gay interpretations. The thirteen artists pay homage to excluded histories and contemporaries, and queer cultural tropes, while nurturing nuance.

‘I’m so gay for you’ are words of affection and joy, they can be flirtatious, liberating, they can pose an invitation, they can heal, they can intimidate, they can make you blush. Our exhibition – curated in a collaboration between terra firma and miłość – works in tandem with the magazine issue, some of the artists included in both print and the show, some of the exhibited responding to and extending the published conversations. 

The first works in the exhibition are Maite de Orbe’s photographs taken in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. Referencing a tradition of gay escapism, Maite presents a new body of work rooted in the ephemeral – encounters from a road trip, a wander seeking belonging in getting lost. In a seemingly documentative medium, Maite focuses on the subjectivity of their storytelling, playing with performative subjects and symbolisms in their narratives of affection and sensuality. 

A similar theme can be found in Nic Bevers’ paintings and its unfinished forms – signalling the incomplete and forgotten narratives, purposely ambiguous and non-prescriptive. ‘Auntie Babs’ (2022) is a vibrant memory from Nic’s childhood, a next-door neighbour who would gossip with their mother over the fence and serve them lemonade. Paul Arthur, like Nic, combines speculation and fantasy with queer pasts, inspired by gay imagery of 70s and 80s, and the intricacies of his own queer identity. Paul’s characters, finding themselves in compromising positions, often reach out of the frame to cover themselves with the edge of their own photograph, in a burlesque-like play of teasing and hiding. 

Olivia Sterling teases us too, with a wealth of pleasure in sweets and genitals. ‘Gulp!’ (2025) returns to Olivia’s fascination with eclairs and their genital and racial ambiguity. The painting’s title refers to a cartoonishly visceral reaction to seeing someone overwhelmingly hot. Olivia asks, ‘What am I getting myself into? Do we look at those we fancy like a hungry wolf looks at sheep?’

Gosia Kołdraszewska’s ‘Central Station’ (2024) reminisces about a time when she lived in the centre of Warsaw with a view of the Central Station and a concentrated community of Warsaw’s pigeons. The painting alludes to a tradition in art history of presentations of gardens of earthly delights, with different species all fucking at the same time being the ultimate symbol of peace and harmony. However, situating the image in a dirty city centre brings about a discomfort – the menacing pigeons, overshadowing an embrace, become a symbol of the queer and marginalised in an urban landscape. Sophie Vallance Cantor plays with a similar trope, using the character of El Diablo to highlight the public perception of immigration, based on her husband’s experience. The context of queerness in this presentation extends towards experiences of ostracization and discomfort of difference. But El Diablo, instead of causing trouble and mischief, is sitting comfortably on a bed of fur, indulgence and camp elegance. While Sophie’s sexuality mirrors this slip in perception founded in preconceptions, her queerness lies in the accommodation of nuance.

Lucy Deverall’s photographs also represent a cultural erasure, a duality that can’t always be shown directly – that of bisexuality. Lucy refers to her work as ‘lyrical documentary’, where she combines documentary photography with staged images. What she achieves are photographs full of desire, lightness and joy, of studious composition. The carefree visual of ‘Yolanda Pissing in a Bush’ (2021) might bring to mind a question of queer ecologies, showing queer bodies existing in harmony with nature. 

In the ‘Echoes of Camp’ (2025) series of screenprint on small metal plates, Rosie Thomas takes on another trope – of musical theatre gays. While the metal plates echo the sounds of the taps, stills from Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s ‘Singing in the Rain’ (1952), the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers classic ‘Shall We Dance’ (1937) or László Kardos’ ‘Small Town Girl’ (1953) show hallmark moments of musical film productions and its exalted, glamorous, overstimulated nature.

An alike performativity can be found in the genre of Westerns and its stylisations of cowboys. Both Jan Możdżyński and Sophie Willison take on gay cowboys in the media of, respectively, ceramic sculpture and collage. Sophie’s collages of specific small-scale elements of a cowboy’s attire – a boot, a tie and a collar, together with Jan’s boot sculpture in its cartoonish proportions, highlight the theatrical quality of a cowboy’s characterisation. The queerness is in the detail, the performance, and the tense and deep interaction between the men. 

Both Sophie and Jan present more sculpture. On a bookshelf, above the new issue of terra firma, Sophie’s showing her collection of ceramic butt plugs – the everyday function of a butt plug is more practical than aesthetic, yet Sophie’s butt plugs are beautiful sculptures which aren’t to be used. Spread across the gallery are Jan’s figurines he calls ‘Crumbllings’, resembling characters from his paintings which he describes as an army of moods, attitudes, thoughts and infatuations. Often inspired by early computer games and Warhammer armies, they are warriors of love who fight with tenderness, curiosity and boastfulness – with a tinge of jealousy.

Maddy Rowley’s jewellery and her silver ‘Yearning Candles’ (2024) echo this love and tenderness. Maddy’s poem about the yearning candles can be found in the magazine – ‘happy to be in heartache and yearning that is our long distance love,’ she writes in a celebration of a bittersweet nature of this ‘canon sapphic experience’. But the candles find their way back, becoming a symbol of reconnection. 

‘The Common Bag’ (2023) was developed in a familial collaboration between Mr Lez and their mom and textile artist, Polly Mortimer. The bag is paying an homage to new family members, those who have passed away, to loving and difficult times – it is a symbol of togetherness, sharing, communion and healing. There is a feeling of urgency in putting together this exhibition, despite it being in the works for a long time, one caused by a political emergency, by a familiar sense of ostracism. The queer community have suffered major setbacks in the recent times, and with the show we wanted to offer a sense of joy and unity, remind what we stand for and that we stand and heal together.