Don't Leave Me This Way : Art in the Age of AIDS

Arthur McIntyre (1945–2003) studied at the National Art School and Alexander Mackie College from 1963–66, and art history at the University of Sydney 1971–73. He exhibited his work from 1970 until his death in Sydney in 2003. In 2010, he was the subject of a major publication and two-part exhibition, *Arthur McIntyre: Bad blood 1960–2000* (Hazelhurst and Macquarie University). As well as a practicing artist, he wrote arts criticism and major books on contemporary Australian drawing and Australian collage, and taught and lectured on art in various NSW high schools, technical colleges and tertiary institutions. He participated in numerous residencies in France between 1975 and the early 1990s, and curated a number of exhibitions on drawing and collage at Holdsworth Galleries. Arthur McIntyre's work is held in the following collections: National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of NSW, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Artbank, and numerous private, corporate, university and regional gallery collections across Australia.

AñA Wojak (b. 1954) is a trans non-binary artist whose work crosses the precipice of performance and visual art. With a particular interest in site-specificity, durational performance, ritual and altered states, they create visually poetic work that resonates with a visceral depth. Based in Widjabul Wia-bul Bundjalung Country, Northern Rivers, NSW this cross-disciplinary artist studied in Gdańsk, Poland amid the turmoil of Solidarity and Martial Law and has been an exhibiting visual artist for over 45 years. With pieces featured in private and public collections, Wojak’s work has also been shortlisted in numerous award exhibitions, winning the prestigious Blake Prize in 2004. They have performed at festivals in Australia, Europe and Asia, including: Interakcje14, Poland (2006), DIAF China (2006), Brisbane Festival (2011), Xplore Festivals Sydney; Berlin, undisclosed territories Java x 2, MAP Delhi (2015), Pelem Festival, Java x 2, MAP Festival Malaysia x 9 and MoNA FoMA Hobart. Collaborations have included senVoodoo (co-founder), Tony Yap Co (Australia), Pacitti Co (London), La Pocha Nostra (US/Mexico), Felix Ruckert (Germany), cloudbeard, Textile Audio; RealArtworks (Australia), among others. Their performance work gestated in the creative hotbed of 1990s queer Sydney and continues to evolve: a deeply rooted Eastern European sensibility of non-verbal theatre and lush aesthetic meld with ongoing explorations informed by Butoh and South East Asian trance into a hybrid dance practice.

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.

David McDiarmid (1952–1995) was a leading gay activist and artist who worked in Melbourne, Sydney and New York. As an early gay liberation activist, he wrote for and illustrated the *Sydney Gay Liberation* newsletter and *Gay Liberation Papers*. His first gallery exhibition in Sydney in 1976 focused on gay male identity and sexual liberation themes. McDiarmid’s creative output encompasses art, design, craft, fashion and music. It also sits at the intersection of activism, art, and community art, with gay rights and identity politics being the primary focus in his contemporary art and graphic design. He moved to New York in 1979 where he lived and worked until 1987. Reflecting on his own work in 1992 he said: “I wanted to express myself and I wanted to respond to what was going on and I wanted to reach a gay male audience. I wanted to express very complex emotions and I didn’t know how to do it . . . I was in a bit of a dilemma. I thought, well, how can I get across these complex messages. I didn’t think it was simply a matter of saying gay is good.” McDiarmid designed posters for Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, Pride and Leather parties, safe sex and World AIDS Day campaigns and he was artistic director of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. He was diagnosed HIV positive in New York 1986 and from his return to Australia in 1987 his work was concerned with HIV/AIDS experience and politics. His famed *Safe Sex* and *Safe Injecting* posters of 1992 designed for the AIDS Council of NSW were an international sensation after they were shown at the 1993 international AIDS conference in Berlin. The *Rainbow Aphorisms*, a series of digital works created between 1993 until shortly before McDiarmid's death of AIDS-related conditions in 1995, is a key example of his political savvy and wit, combining gay and queer activism with tongue-in-cheek statements, pointed truths, and messages of hope. His work has been widely collected by institutions and in 2017–18 his *Rainbow Aphorisms* featured throughout the London Underground transport network as part of the ongoing *Art on the Underground* program, a presentation initiated by London's Studio Voltaire and the David McDiarmid estate. In 2014, McDiarmid was the subject of the major survey exhibition *David McDiarmid: When This You See Remember Me* at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. His work continues to be shown internationally.

eX de Medici (b. 1959) was born in the Riverina area of rural southern New South Wales in the township of Coolamon, though largely grew up in Canberra. De Medici studied at the Canberra School of Art, where she specialised in performance, installation and photography. Since then, de Medici's practice has broadened to incorporate photography, painting and drawing. De Medici creates finely detailed drawings and watercolours, reflecting her interest in natural history illustration, especially watercolours. Her work is predominantly known for the incorporation of techniques and methods from her entwined practice as a tattooist. The artist got her first tattoo in 1988 in Melbourne and from this point focused increasingly on the application of line and form on the human body, reflecting an ongoing interest in the vanitas tradition. Common motifs in her works include skulls, guns and flora. During the 1980s, when fears of HIV/AIDS were circulating in Australia and internationally, she exhibited images of tattooed skin next to framed blood samples and the stained swabs that were the byproducts of the process of inking the body. Works utilising blood and swabs such as *Godscience V (Stars)* and *VI* were exhibited in the National Gallery of Australia's landmark 1994 exhibition *Don't Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS* and subsequently acquired in 1996. De Medici's work is represented in the collection of the NGA and most State galleries, and she has exhibited extensively within Australia and internationally.

Hiram To (杜子卿) (1964-2017) was an artist who worked in conceptual-based installations. He was also a writer in the visual arts, popular culture, film and fashion. Born in Hong Kong to Chinese parents, Hiram To lived in Scotland and Australia. He has widely exhibited in Australian public galleries and internationally, with works acquired by institutions such as the National Gallery of Australia, Powerhouse Museum and the Queensland Art Gallery. Hiram was invited by London’s Camden Arts Centre to exhibit a one-person exhibition in 1994. The invitation was the first Chinese artist solo show at a British contemporary art museum. The Winnipeg Art Gallery, the State Gallery of Manitoba in Canada also presented a selected projects survey of the artist in 2002. He was one of three artists representing Hong Kong at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. As a curator, he has collaborated with Institute of Modern Art Brisbane, Artspace Sydney, Ipswich Regional Art Gallery and Next Wave Festival in Australia, and Hong Kong’s Goethe-Institut. Since 1995, he resided in Hong Kong and worked in communications and journalism. His writings have appeared in South China Morning Post, Harpers Bazaar Hong Kong, C for Culture, City Magazine, The Standard and many other English and Chinese language publications. Hiram To’s work tackles the nature of changing identity and its relationships with the mass media and personal / public interface. Taking reference from a wide variety of sources such as literature, film, art and popular culture, he creates multi-layered installations that embrace and challenge the way that identity is constructed or fragmented. http://www.randian-online.com/np_news/hiram-to1964-2017-dont-let-me-be-misunderstood/

Lex Middleton (b. 1962) is an artist, filmmaker, and photographer living and working in Naarm / Melbourne. His practice is mainly, but not limited to photography, filmmaking and drawing. International, Queer and local culture, history and ephemera are his references and interests. Travel and food culture also has allowed him to produce photo essays and films from India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Ross Moore (b. 1954) is a Melbourne-based artist, academic, and writer who came to prominence in the 1990s for discussing issues around the gay body and the HIV/AIDS crisis. He was known for his banner pieces which were included in Ted Gott's *Don't Leave Me This Way* at the National Gallery of Australia. Moore's work employs popular graphics from his childhood to reconfigure current issues. Moore made a series of works dealing with kitsch representations of Aboriginal identity, tracking a difficult terrain, Moore as a non-indigenous artist made parallels between experiences of homophobia and racism. Moore's artworks are unashamedly an act of activist art, his black and white banner *Sodomized* (1995) skillfully conflates issues around HIV/AIDS, gay male sexuality, right-wing politics, pop culture, and health. Moore is now predominately a writer and academic working at the Australian Catholic University.

Ross T. Smith (b. 1961) is a Ngāpuhi/Māori photographer who has lived between both Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Smith studied fine art photography in Melbourne at the Australian College of Photography Art and Communication between 1987 and 1990. In particular, Smith is known for his photographic series such as *Hokianga* (1997–98), held in the permanent collection of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, and *Hemi Tuwharerangi Paraha* (1999) in which these two bodies of work position the image of young Māori men and women within the remote New Zealand landscape. In these complex series of portraits, Smith depicts the figure in varying states of strength and fragility, eschewing evocative documentary portraiture to consider the restrictions of identity and representation in a marginalised group. Smith is known within Australia for his large-scale photographic composition *L’amour et la mort sont la même chose* (1990–92), held within the National Gallery of Victoria collection and exhibited within *QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection* (2022), *TRANSMISSIONS: Archiving HIV/AIDS, Melbourne 1979–2014*, George Paton Gallery, University of Melbourne (2014), and *Don't Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS* (1994), National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Smith's work is held in various Australian, New Zealand, and international collections.

William Yang (b. 1943) is a Sydney-based photographer and pioneer of LGBTQI+ Australian photographic practice. Born in Mareeba, just outside of the northern Queensland city of Cairns, Yang became recognised for his emotive documentation of Sydney's queer scene after moving to the capital of New South Wales in the late 1960s. Yang's photographs record in intimate and moving detail the emergence and impact of HIV/AIDS on his friends and broader community within the city in the 1980s. Yang's work also engages with his identity in relation to his Chinese-Australian ancestry, and familial relationships and histories. The artist is known particularly for his technique of inscribing photographic prints with commentary and reflections that broaden the frame of the image, integrating photography and memoir to create a hybrid life-image writing. Yang's work has featured in significant group exhibitions both interstate and internationally, including *World Without End*, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2000); *Don't Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS*, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (1994); *Life Lines*, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2009); *On the Edge: Australian Photographers of the 1970s*, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego (1998); *Sydney Photographed*, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (1994); and *From Bondi to Uluru*, Higashikawa Arts Centre, Hokkaido (1993). The artist's practice has been surveyed in a number of prominent retrospectives and solo presentations including *Diaries*, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney (1998); *William Yang: Australian Chinese*, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra (2001); and *William Yang: Seeing and Being Seen*, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (2021). His works are held in major state galleries, as well as the National Gallery of Australia and National Portrait Gallery.