Black light poster black felt1/13/2024 Gray didn't immediately say yes, telling him she needed time to think. McDiarmid and Gray were in his studio on Ivy Street in Chippendale in 1993 when he asked her to act as the executor of his estate after he died. It made him personally incredibly furious, but also it made him very focused on his own legacy," Gray says.ĭrawing on what he learned from the gay community in the US, McDiarmid gave talks in conjunction with the Sydney Writers' Festival and the Arts Law Centre of Australia about the management of artists' estates in the face of the AIDS crisis. "That's not what happened, and that was a hugely sobering thing for David. McDiarmid had encouraged his friend to create a will to preserve his artistic legacy and ensure his art could be shown after his death. In 1992, Peter Tully died intestate in Paris from an AIDS-related illness. "He became very fiercely focused in both the political intent and the aesthetic development of his work." Planning for life after death Gray says he was incensed at the homophobic backlash against the AIDS epidemic he perceived in the wider community, and channelled his anger into his art. McDiarmid served as designer and then artistic director for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras (1988-1990) and, in 1992, produced a series of posters for the AIDS Council of New South Wales (ACON). In 1991, Sydney's Syme Dodson Gallery presented Kiss of Light, a solo show comprising McDiarmid's work responding to the AIDS crisis and its impact on the gay community. I thought California was great but this is it! I never want to leave! The air is electric, the sidewalks are magic and the people are crazy crazy crazy."įor McDiarmid, "America represented the new, the culturally and sexually radical, the artistically innovative and avant-garde, the profligate, excessive and rich, the hip and the cool," Gray observed in an essay on his work published in the 2008 book Transnational Ties: Australian Lives in the World.īack in Sydney, McDiarmid immersed himself in art and activism. He wrote a letter to Tully, who was still in Sydney, describing New York: "This city is breath-taking. In 1977, McDiarmid, a long-time observer of popular culture and gay identity politics in America, travelled to the US for the first time. It was the first group show of its kind in Australia. McDiarmid also appeared in an exhibition of homosexual and lesbian artists at Watters Gallery in 1978, alongside artists such as Tully and Vivienne Binns. He was one of the queer activists – known as 78ers – who marched in the first Sydney Mardi Gras Parade in 1978. In the same year, McDiarmid became the first person in Australia to be arrested at a gay rights protest, while demonstrating outside ABC studios in Sydney in response to management's decision to cancel a news segment on the gay liberation movement in Australia. In 1972, he helped establish Sydney Gay Liberation, designing newsletters, T-shirts and badges for the cause, and joining protests. McDiarmid had been involved in gay activism since the early 70s, when he joined Melbourne Gay Liberation. Through that exhibition, he was both positioning himself in … gay male cultural history and making propositions about his own sexuality," says Gray. "The work traced gay icons in film and literature and art history. It was a groundbreaking show made up of collages and drawings that explored gay male sexuality – eight years before sex between men was decriminalised in NSW. Gray's first taste of McDiarmid's art came via his first exhibition, Secret Love, held at Hogarth Galleries in 1976. We were immersed in all the social and political changes that were happening then." "Very quickly, we were in each other's households, at each other's parties, and David and I developed a particular relationship which I would call a discussion relationship, a talking relationship. They were ex-lovers and very close friends and collaborators … We just looked at each other and went: 'Oh yes!' Gray recalls: "Peter had a stall selling his jewellery and what was then called 'tat' – stuff from op-shops – and David was there. Gray and her then-husband, Brian Sayer, met McDiarmid at Paddington Markets in Sydney in 1975, where he was sharing a stall with artist and jewellery designer Peter Tully.
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