Melbourne gay pri | Art Blart

Contents:

• DAVID ALLEN, FOUNR OF MEN ON MEN GAY ART PRIZE, AWARD QUEEN'S BIRTHDAY HONOUR
• THE BT GAY BARS MELBOURNE
• EXPLORE GAY ROOMS & RENTALS MELBOURNE
• GAY MELBOURNE · CY GUI
• WHY GAY-IENDLY TAIWAN IS A CREATIVE HAVEN FOR LGBTQ ART
• MELBOURNE GAY DANCE CLUBS
• MELBOURNE GAY MAP

DAVID ALLEN, FOUNR OF MEN ON MEN GAY ART PRIZE, AWARD QUEEN'S BIRTHDAY HONOUR

Ponch Hawk, No tle (Two women embracg, 'Glad to be gay') 1973; prted 2018 gelat silver photograph, Natnal Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

What began as a rearch project by curators followg the ntroversial natnal plebisce on gay marriage 2017 has sparked an stutn-wi reappraisal of s llectns.

THE BT GAY BARS MELBOURNE

A broad sweep of history is reflected objects om Ancient Greece to f--siècle dandyism and emergg 20th-century queer activism such as Gilbert Baker’s rabow flag (first flown durg San Francis’s 1978 Gay Freedom Day Para) and inic stum by Melbourne-born artist Leigh Bowery. Hannah Brontë’s work Umma’s Tongue – molten at 6000° is spired, acrdg to the artist, by ‘the magic of ftivals, sweaty gay dance floors and chosen fai… I want to honour all the powerful LGBTQIA+ humans who me before me and fought hard to revolutnise the reprentatn of what looks like to be ’.

‘Beg part of this is for my people, my muny, my BIG gay ass fay!

(Supplied: 1770 Art Show and Competn)The lnch of Men on MenIn 2001, Mr Allen and his partner Ron Watks found a gay art prize tled Men on Men Art Exhibn and Competn when they were nng The Laird Hotel Collgwood, pub is one of the longt nng gay-owned and operated venu Atralia and many of Mr Allen's regulars at the time were volved the arts, but unable to fd spac to display their work. (Instagram: The Laird, Melbourne)"Back the early 2000s, was very difficult to get to art galleri at any rate, let alone if you were g om a gay perspective, " Mr Allen said.

EXPLORE GAY ROOMS & RENTALS MELBOURNE

"We had a lot of gay ctomers who were artists and they were really stgglg to fd plac where they uld exhib their artworks, so we created one.

" Men on Men Art Show and Competn provis a space for gay artists at The Laird, Melbourne. The bt gay bars MelbourneYou would thk what wh the fanfare surroundg Sydney's annual Mardi Gras ftival that the harbour cy was the clear rglear of Atralia's gay scene,..

Here are Melbourne’s top five gay snas and cise loung –..

GAY MELBOURNE · CY GUI

“Gay and lbian inty (and, by extensn, queer inty) is predited on the ia that, as sexuali, they are visible, bee sexualy is not a visible inty the ways that race or sex are visible. Only by means of dividual exprsn are gay and lbian sexuali ma discernible. As you uld those days, I applied for gay facto partnership stat and got my permanent rincy.

I was the only gay man town who had tattoos and a shaved head, who wore Fred Perrys, brac and Doc Martens.

All the other gay men seemed to be stuck the New Romantics era. In 1988 I walked to the Xchange Hotel on Commercial Road, then one of the pubs on the cy’s ma gay drag, and said to the manager, Craig, ‘I’m hungry, I’m starvg, give me a job’, or words to that effect. ’1 In a strange synchronicy, 1989 I verted the pk triangle of the ‘Silence = Death’ poster so that rembled the pk triangle ed to intify gay (male) prisoners sent to Nazi ncentratn mps bee of their homosexualy; the Pk Triangl were nsired the ‘lowt’ and ‘most signifint’ prisoners.

WHY GAY-IENDLY TAIWAN IS A CREATIVE HAVEN FOR LGBTQ ART

It is timated that the Nazis killed up to 15, 000 homosexuals ncentratn mps. Both the jumper and the jacket have both been donated to the Atralian Lbian and Gay Archiv.

By the very fact of beg a ‘gay’ punk and skhead, too, I was effectively subvertg the stat quo: the hetero-normative, whe patriarchal society much evince Atralia at the time. Murray Healy’s excellent book, Gay Sks: Class, Masculy and Queer Appropriatn, was cril to my unrstandg of what I was dog tuively.

MELBOURNE GAY DANCE CLUBS

Healy looks to the myths and misapprehensns surroundg gay sks by explorg fascism, fetishism, class, sexualy and genr.

MELBOURNE GAY MAP

Tracg the historil velopment of the gay sk om 1968, he asss what gay men have done to the harst cult of them all.

He asks how they transformed the gay scene Bra and then around the world, and observ that the ‘prevly sublimated queerns of workg class youth culture was aggrsively foreground punk.

’5 There is now a whole cult of gay men who like nothg better than displayg their transformative sexualy by shavg their heads and puttg on their Docs to go down the pub for a few drks. Supposedly as hard as nails and as gay as fuck, the look is more than a stume, as much leatherwear has bee recent years: is a spirual attu and a way of life.

I know the queens were shocked – the looks we got reflected, part, what blood meant to the gay muny that era – but this is who I then was. “Paradoxil masculy tak the tradnal signs of patriarchal masculy and filters them through an ironic gay lens.

Signs such as mcl [and gay skheads], which heterosexual culture highlight mascule genr by potg out the power men have over women and the power they have to rist other men, through gay irony emerge as enticements to homoerotic sire – a sire that is anathema to orthodox masculy. Through vlatn gay men are brought closer to a physil and mental eroticism.

Wearg my punk jacket, beg a gay skhead and explorg different pleasur always took me out of myself to another realm – a sensive gay man who belonged to a tribe that was as sexy and viant as fuck. Murray Healy, Gay Sks: Class, masculy and queer appropriatn (London: Cassell, 1996), p. Brian Pronger, The Arena of Masculy: Sports, homosexualy, and the meang of sex (New York: St Mart’s Prs, 1990), p.

Collectn of the Atralian Lbian and Gay Archiv (ALGA). Melbourne gay pri 1994. Melbourne gay pri.

Body patg, Melbourne gay pri.