Brenton Heath-Kerr

Brenton Heath-Kerr/ Brendon Williamson/ Peter Elfes ‘Brenton in “Gingham”’, 1992-1996, costume, lycra.
Image courtesy of the estate of Brenton Heath-Kerr and Peter Elfes.

Bio

Brenton Heath-Kerr (1962-1995) was a performance artist and costume designer/maker who lived and worked in Sydney, Australia. Heath-Kerr died of HIV/AIDS-related complications in 1995. Heath-Kerr designed and performed in his disruptive costumes in Sydney’s queer nightlife scene. Grappling with declining health, his designs came to address his own mortality, exemplified by an intervention in the now unwearable costume Self Portrait in Latex (1994). Each of Heath-Kerr’s designs resonates with elements of fashionable modernism, from the Surrealist escapades of Dior, Schiaparelli, Dali and Jean Cocteau to the post modern anything goes antics of Andy Warhol, Leigh Bowery, Vivienne Westwood or Madonna. The artist’s repertoire has a common subtext which arouses the spontaneity, genderbender chic and nonsensical traits of Dada. Heath-Kerr wore Self Portrait in Latex (1994) to the opening of Don't Leave Me This Way Art in the Age of AIDS at the National Gallery of Australia. Many of Heath-Kerr’s costumes and sketches are held in the Powerhouse Museum’s collection in Sydney, Australia.