THE AUSTRALIAN UGLINESS
Glenn Walls. Cover of Robin Boyd’s book ‘The Australian Ugliness’. First published in 1960.
Original cover drawing by Robin Boyd. Reimagined in 2023.
Glenn Walls. Super rainbow. Mirror tiles, neon light, skate wheels and mirror plinth. 2023
Glenn Walls. Super rainbow. Mirror tiles, neon light and skate wheels. 2023. Based on the Italian architectural
group, Superstudio’s work, The Continuous Monument: An Architectural Model for Total Urbanisation. 1969 – 71.
Glenn Walls. Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness. Chapter 1: The Descent into Chaos. Published in 1960.
The first chapter of Robin Boyd’s 1960 book, The Australian Ugliness. Paper. 2023
Glenn Walls. Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness. Chapter 1: The Descent into Chaos. Pg 7. Published in 1960.
Pink eyes stare out for the first glimpse of Australia still filled with an even, empty greyness. Digitally altered. Paper. 2023.
Glenn Walls. Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness. Chapter 1: The Descent into Chaos. Pg 8. Published in 1960.
This is the Australian, hard, raw, yet is not malevolent in appearance into the background of Australian life. Its presence cannot be forgotten. Digitally altered. Paper. 2023.
Glenn Walls. Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness. Chapter 1: The Descent into Chaos. Pg 9. Published in 1960.
Featurism is by no means confined to Australia. Digitally altered. Paper. 2023.
Glenn Walls. Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness. Chapter 1: The Descent into Chaos. Pg 9. Published in 1960.
Featurism is by no means confined to Australia. Paper stacks, A3 in size. Installation view. 2023.
Glenn Walls. Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness. Chapter 1: The Descent into Chaos. Pg 10. Published in 1960.
“To hide the truth and camouflage. Camouflage has always been a favoured practice. In Australia. A faint stigma. Veneering has become entirely respectable. Digitally altered. Paper. 2023.
Glenn Walls. Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness. Chapter 1: The Descent into Chaos. Pg 11. Published in 1960.
Quotes are taken from ‘Queering the Map’ located in Melbourne. Names and ages are fictional. Digitally altered. Paper. 2023.
https://www.queeringthemap.com/
Glenn Walls. Super rainbow. Mirror tiles, neon light and skate wheels. 2023. Based on the Italian architectural
group, Superstudio’s work, The Continuous Monument: An Architectural Model for Total Urbanisation. 1969 – 71.
Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness. Published in 1960.
The Australian Ugliness by Glenn Walls.
Australian architect and architectural critic Robin Boyd’s seminal critique on Australian suburban life and architecture The Australian Ugliness was first published in 1960. In the book, Boyd highlighted Australian architecture’s need to mask its true identity with kitsch materials and imported architectural styles unsuited to the Australian climate and landscape. Boyd referred to this phenomenon as “featurism”. As Emma Letizia Jones states:
“Boyd rejected outright the pervasive signs of a commercial kitsch architectural currency he labelled “Featurism”, and it was characterised by veneers of all sorts: brick veneer construction in the suburbs, brightly coloured plastic veneers in the home, veneers of advertising in the streets, veneers of “Australian character” on an international Western culture. Against this imported Featurism worn as a prettifying mask, Boyd argued for a truly Australian Modern beyond mere cosmetic effects, which he sought through his own architectural projects” (Jones 2014)
Featurism provided architects and builders the opportunity to ‘cover up’ the true identity of a building making it appear as something it was not.
Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness. Contents page. Published in 1960.
But this was a period when masking was all the rage, not just in architecture. As Emma Letizia Jones also states, “Featurism in short was the adopted visual style of an ambivalent, uncertain population at odds with its surroundings, unsure of how to inhabit them, clinging to the edges of a continent and looking everywhere for answers but into its own interior” (Jones 2014 p. 96). The post-war era of the 1950s and 1960s was a period of extreme conservatism in Australia. This period coincided with conservative social and cultural attitudes to sexuality and identity. To survive many LGBTQI+ people felt the need to mask their identity. Rachel Morgain highlights the repression and victimisation during this period. She states:
“The years following the Second World War saw a drive to consolidate the family, encourage women to have children and push them out of unconventional war-time jobs, so that there would be positions for returned soldiers. The campaign against homosexuality in the 1950s was an escalation of this process, seeking to rectify the decline in social discipline that conservatives argued had occurred during the war. Over a few years, there was a sharp increase in the number of people charged with and convicted of homosexual offences. Police actively entrapped homosexual men. A special squad targeting homosexuality was set up in the Victorian police and the NSW police superintendent labelled homosexuality ‘the greatest social menace facing Australia’. Homosexuals in the public service became particular targets. There were moves to isolate homosexual men in NSW prisons and to have them locked up in mental institutions. The tabloid press was filled with scandals about gay men. What little coverage there was in the quality press sent a clear message to anyone thinking of straying from the heterosexual norm: that path could lead only to shame and arrest”. (Morgain 2004 p. 5)
Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness. Chapter 1: The Descent into Chaos. Pg 7. Published in 1960.
To survive during this period masking by the LGBTQI+ community became a necessity. Certain clothing, hairstyles, and jewellery were to be avoided. Appropriate clothing provided the armour that concealed one’s true identity. Joel Sanders highlights this in the preface to the 2021 reissue of his 1996 book ‘Stud: The Architecture of Masculinity’, “I came to realize that the clothing that clad bodies behaved like the cladding of buildings: wall finishes, paint, fabrics, curtains, upholstery and furniture are like garments, culturally coded applied surfaces that designers use to fashion human identity” (Sanders 2020 p. 8). Similarly, Boyd’s ‘featurism’ that aimed to clad a building in an identity that, according to him was fake, became locations where queer life happened. In this project, I argue that despite the masking of both queer people and architecture, queer identity occurred allowing architecture to become queer space via memory.
By the 1960s bold civil liberties groups and the New York Stonewall Riots in 1969 were seen as a turning point, gay liberation and activism exploded. The LGBTQI+ community began to move out of the fringes and into the mainstream. As laws were repealed, homosexuality decimalised, and attitudes changed our relationship to queer identity and queer space also changed. Boyd’s book The Australian Ugliness provided a snapshot of a particular time in Australia’s cultural and built history, one that was masked in Featurism in search of an identity. But as Peter Conrad states: “Books that quarrel with the way things inevitably lose their point when things change. But it’s no disgrace to re-treat into history, and The Australian Ugliness testifies to a confused and uncertain period in the national life that, with a little help from Boyd, we happily outgrew” (Conrad, p. 63). Sadly, masking one’s identity is still an issue for many in the LGBTQI+ community. To suggest all is well regarding LGBTQI+ rights is an understatement1. However, this project provides the opportunity to engage with queer lives and queer space by marking the location within the pages of Boyd’s book where queer memories occurred and are remembered.
Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness. Chapter 1: The Descent into Chaos. Pg 8 & 9. Published in 1960.
Regardless of the featurism found in Australian suburban homes, they were still locations where memories were made. Inspired by artist Tom Phillips’s project ‘A Humument; A Treated Victorian Novel 1966 – 2016, in which Phillips randomly ‘began to doctor the pages with images, both abstract and figurative’ (Kidd, 2012), this project uses the locations found in the text of Boyd book The Australian Ugliness as data points to highlight queer spaces that had the potential for this to occur through fictional recollections, photographs, digital imagery and drawings placed on Boyd text. These are fictional coming-out stories of opportunities that were never recorded but may have happened, but because of the entrenched homophobia and laws in place during this period, a veneer was put in place to mask queer existence in the built environment. With that veneer removed we are now able to engage with locations marked as a place that ‘queer’ happened and remember.
Notes.
1. In the United States of America there have been over 120 Bills Restricting LGBTQ Rights Introduced Nationwide in 2023. Most relate to trans issues. https://www.tracktranslegislation.com/
Bibliography
ABC News 2015, Timeline: 22 years between first and last Australian states decriminalising male homosexuality, ABC News website, accessed 2 February 2023. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-24/timeline:-australian-states-decriminalise-male-homosexuality/6719702
Australian Human Rights Commission 2023, Face the facts: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex People, Australian Human Rights Commission website, accessed 2 February 2023. https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/education/face-facts-lesbian-gay-bisexual-trans-and-intersex-people
Bleakley, P 2021, ‘Fish in a Barrel: Police Targeting of Brisbane’s Ephemeral Gay Spaces in the Pre-Decriminalization Era’, Journal of homosexuality, vol. 68, no. 6, Routledge, United States, pp. 1037–1058.
Boyd, R. (1960). The Australian ugliness. F. W. Cheshire, Melbourne.
Burke, S 2018, Find Yourself in the Queer Version of Google Maps, VICE website, accessed 30 January 2023.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne9kjx/queering-the-map-google-maps-lgtbq
Carlson, D 2012, The education of eros: a history of education and the problem of adolescent sexuality, Routledge, New York.
Conrad, P 2009, ‘Coming of Age: Peter Conrad on Robin Boyd’s “The Australian Ugliness” Fifty Years On’, Monthly (Melbourne, Vic.), no. Dec 2009 – Jan 2010, Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd, Melbourne, Vic, pp. 60–63.
https://search.informit.org/doi/epdf/10.3316/informit.655309633983791
Dahmubed, C 2018, ‘Memorializing queer space’, Crit, no. 83, pp. 71-78.
Jones, EL 2014, ‘Rediscovering “The Australian Ugliness”. Robin Boyd and the Search for the Australian Modern’, Studii de istoria și teoria arhitecturii, vol. 2014, no. 2, Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism, pp. 94–114. https://sita.uauim.ro/article/2-jones-rediscovering-the-australian-ugliness
Kidd, J 2012, Every Day of my Life is Like a Page.The Literary Review, Issue 400.Tom Phillips. Accessed 15 February 2023.
https://www.tomphillips.co.uk/humument/essays/item/5858-every-day-of-my-life-is-like-a-page-by-james-kidd
Kontominas, B 2017. ‘Scott Johnson: Inside one brother’s 30-year fight to find the truth’. The Age. Accessed 14 February 2023.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-30/scott-johnson-inside-brothers-fight-to-find-the-truth/9211466
LGBTQI+ Health Australia 2021, Snapshot of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Statistics for LGBTIQ+ People, LGBTQI+ Health Australia website, accessed 2 February 2023. https://www.lgbtiqhealth.org.au/statistics
London Transport Museum 2023, Mapping London: the iconic Tube map. London Transport Museum website, accessed 1 February 2023. https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/stories/design/mapping-london-iconic-tube-map
Morgain, R. 2004. Sexual liberation: fighting lesbian and gay oppression. Australian National University Publications
https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/42704
National Geographic 2023, Map, National Geographic website, accessed 2 February 2023. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/map
Oswin, N. (2008) ‘Critical geographies and the uses of sexuality: deconstructing queer space’, Progress in Human Geography, 32(1), pp. 89–103. doi:10.1177/0309132507085213.
Queering the Map. 2023. Queering the Map. https://www.queeringthemap.com/
Sanders, J 2020 (Reissue), Stud: Architectures of Masculinity, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton.
SBS 2016, The history and importance of gay beats, SBS website, accessed 6 February 2023. https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/pride/agenda/article/2016/10/17/history-and-importance-gay-beats
Strike Force Parrabell 2018, New South Wales Police Force. viewed November 11 2022, https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/safety_and_prevention/your_community/working_with_lgbtqia/lgbtqia_accordian/strike_force_parrabell
Wotherspoon, G 2017, Gay Hate Crimes in New South Wales from the 1970s, viewed 11th November 2022, https://www.acon.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/In-Pursuit-of-Truth-and-Justice-Report-FINAL-220518.pdf.
Forever Young Part 3
Glenn Walls. Untitled (Forever Young. Oscar, The Smiths). Paper stacks, wood, laser cut metal, mirror tiles, carpet, 2022. Words are taken from quotes by Oscar Wilde and The Smiths’ 1985 song “There is a light that never goes out”.
Forever Young is a continuation of the series “Massacre – Bodies that Matter” from 2018 – 2019.
Glenn Walls. Untitled (Forever Young, The Smiths). Paper stacks, wood, laser cut metal, mirror tiles, carpet, 2022. Words are taken from The Smiths’ 1985 song “There is a light that never goes out”.
Glenn Walls. Untitled (Forever Young, The Smiths). Paper stacks, wood, laser cut metal, mirror tiles, carpet, 2022. Words are taken from The Smiths’ 1985 song “There is a light that never goes out”.
Glenn Walls. Untitled (Forever Young, Oscar Wilde). Paper stacks, laser cut metal, gold beads, 2022. Words are taken from a quote by Oscar Wilde
Glenn Walls. Untitled (Forever Young, after Felix). Paper stacks, red glitter paper, mirror tiles, 2022.
Glenn Walls. Untitled (Forever Young, The Smiths). Paper stacks, laser cut metal, gold beads, 2022. Words are taken from The Smiths’ 1985 song “There is a light that never goes out”.
Forever Young
Violence against LGBTQI people continues with the recent shooting inside and outside a gay nightclub in Oslo, Norway in the early hours of Saturday 25th June 2022
Glenn Walls. Untitled (Take a look at the law man beating up the wrong guy). Metal plate, paper stack. 2022. Words are taken from David Bowie’s 1971 – 73 song “Life on Mars”.
Glenn Walls. Untitled (Forever Young. Marsha P. Johnson). Digital print. 2022. Words are taken from the 1984 Alphaville song “Forever Young”.
Forever Young is a continuation of the series “Massacre – Bodies that Matter” from 2018 – 2019.
Violence against LGBTQI people continues with the recent shooting inside and outside a gay nightclub in Oslo, Norway in the early hours of Saturday 25th June 2022.
More works to follow.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-25/norway-nightclub-shooting-police-possible-terrorism/101183546
Closure
In 2018 I held an exhibition called “Massacre: Bodies that Matter” at Kings ARI. The exhibition highlighted the unsolved gay murders in Sydney in the 1970s to the 2000s. Due to a combination of police indifference/incompetence/homophobia many of these murders went unsolved. Last week the murder of American citizen Scott Johnson was finally solved.
To find out more click on the link below:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-07/scott-johnson-murders-still-haunt-sydney/101045786
To see the works from the 2018 exhibition “Massacre: Bodies that Matter” at Kings ARI.
https://glennwalls.com/category/massacre/
Glenn Walls. Drawing from Butt Magazine. 2018. Drawing on paper. 21 x 20 cms
I never can say goodbye
Glenn Walls. I never can say goodbye. Wood board, laser cut mirrored letters, sequin material. 2021. Words are from the Gloria Gaynor song. “Never can say goodbye”, 1974.
Glenn Walls. I never can say goodbye (After Felix). Digital print, paper stack. 2021. This work contains an image of American LGBTQI rights activist Marsha P. Johnson who was murdered in 1992.
Glenn Walls. I never can say goodbye (After Felix). Digital print, paper stack. 2021. This work contains an image of Superstudio -Supersurface, 1971.
Glenn Walls. I never can say goodbye (After Felix). Digital print, mirror ball, paper stack. 2021. Text on the mirror ball is a quote from Oscar Wilde, “If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life”. This work contains an image of Ross Warren who was murdered in July 1989 at the Bondi headlands, a well know gay beat.
Glenn Walls. I never can say goodbye. Mirror tiles, mirror plinth, skateboard wheels, red sequin, 2021. Based on Superstaudio, “Continuous Monument”, 1969.
Glenn Walls. I never can say goodbye. Mirror tiles, mirror plinth, skateboard wheels, red sequin, 2021. Based on Superstaudio, “Continuous Monument”, 1969.
Architecture’s preoccupation with ‘normality’ has left little room for queer domestic space to come to the fore. This body of work contributes to public acknowledgment of queer space in the built environment, highlighting queer injustices. Few artists have broached this subject. I am interested in creating a personal definition of queer space that is not hidden and is a reaction against normative symbols of masculinity and the ‘heterosexual assumption’ presented by 1960s Italian architectural group Superstudio anti-design grid. Inspired by Cuban artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s work “Untitled” (Death by Gun), 1990, these works are based on research conducted on the gay and trans killings that took place in Sydney and worldwide in the late 1970s till now.
“I can never say goodbye Part 1 & 2” is a continuation of research conducted from the 2018 exhibition “Massacre: Bodies that matter” held at Kings ARI, which is found further down on this website.
The text below is from “Massacre: Bodies that matter”.
‘Our blood runs in the streets and in the parks and in casualty and in the morgue…. ‘Our own blood, the blood of our brothers and sisters, has been spilt too often….
‘Our blood runs because in this country our political, educational, legal and religious systems actively encourage violence against us…
‘We are gay men and lesbians.’
From the ‘One in Seven’ Manifesto, Sydney Star Observer, 5 April 1991
During the 1970s, 80s & 90s in Sydney, Australia a high number of LGBTIQ people were violently bashed, murdered or disappeared entirely. Although some of these incidents were reported in the gay press and the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board[1] at the time many remained unreported to the authorities[2] due to cultural and societal attitudes with and within the NSW police force and the wider community tolerance of homosexuality. With the advent of AIDS in the 80s, “a significant media and social response of gay alienation within the context of ‘moral panic’ occurred” (Strike Force Parrabell 2018, p. 13). ‘Beats’ such as toilet blocks, public parks and beaches (Bondi Headlands) where men met other men for sex or social contact became the target of gangs that felt it was their duty to rid and protect the community of such ‘intolerable’ behaviour [3].
By the late 90s, early 2000s with a growing acceptance within the wider community of homosexuality a series of media reports and research papers emerged within the mainstream press highlighting both the injustice caused to the LGBTIQ community and the entrenched homophobia and failure within the NSW police force that allowed a ‘killing and bashing spree” to take place with little repercussion to the perpetrators[4].
American Ph.D. candidate Scott Johnston was only 27 when he died. “It was December 10, 1988, when Scott’s naked body was found by two rock fishermen at the base of the cliff, near Blue Fish Point, just south of Manly, on Sydney’s northern beaches. Scott’s clothes had been found neatly folded on the clifftop above” (Kontominas 2017) including his pair of Adidas sneakers. This is shown in the exhibition as a wood carving. The police deemed it a suicide. Three months later, Coroner Derrick Hand came to the same conclusion. His brother Steve Johnson and boyfriend of five years, Michael Noone is still today not convinced that this is the case. All failed to acknowledge that the location was a well know beat where anti-gay gangs operated and where other gay/hate murders had occurred previously.
The main research question addressed in this exhibition is:
Through sculptures, architectural models, and digital prints, in what ways can I reconfigure the masculine/heterosexual dominance of Superstudio’s anti-design grid to a personal interpretation of queer space?
My reading and understanding of this grid argue a social, philosophical, and identity position in which to interpret my works, giving the audience a greater understanding of the power of things to form a narrative for the object or space. My aim is to think through these processes via practice, critiquing Superstudio’s anti-design grid to produce work that re-evaluates masculine/heterosexual dominance of architectural space by highlighting an injustice done to a minority.
Research contribution
Architecture’s preoccupation with ‘normality’ has left little room for queer domestic space to come to the fore. I argue that ‘the “normality” of heterosexuality is so deeply ingrained in Western culture that it is not even seen’ (Myslik 1996, p. 159). So entrenched is this understanding that I have found little evidence of the public acknowledgment of queer space in the built environment, let alone one highlighting queer injustices. Few artists have broached this subject. I am interested in creating a personal definition of queer space that was not hidden and is a reaction against normative symbols of masculinity and the ‘heterosexual assumption’ presented by Superstudio anti-design grid.
Inspired by Cuban artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres work “Untitled” (Death by Gun), 1990, this exhibition will be based on research conducted on the gay killings that took place in Sydney in the late 1970s till 2000. This was a period of extreme distrust by the LGBTQI community in the NSW Police Force who symmetrically failed to acknowledge, protect, report, or simply dismiss community concerns. This will result in a series of works highlighting the high number of victims and the fact that a number of murders are unsolved. Although there is conjecture as to whether some of these murders are gay/hate crimes, the fact that were not properly investigated at the time is a dark stain on our history.
What is Strike Force Parrabell?
On 30 August 2015 Strike Force Parrabell commenced a thorough investigative review to determine whether 88 deaths originally listed in a submission to the Australian Institute of Criminology[5], and commonly referred to by media representatives, could be classified as motivated by bias including gay-hate (Strike Force Parrabell 2018).
NOTES
[1] While the onset of HIV/AIDS has been seen as a motivating factor for some of the violence, the start of the violence predates that. A report by the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board in 1982 already highlighted the issue, and over that decade, there was ongoing and increasing violence. In 1990 the Surry Hills police noted a 34% increase in reports of street bashings during that year alone (Wotherspoon 2017).
[2] The Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby and later, the AIDS Council of NSW (now ACON) kept records, usually comprising self-reported incidents of gay-hate violence, that on several occasions amounted to more than 20 entries per day. Unfortunately, fear associated with anti-gay attitudes of officers within the NSW Police Force at the time prevented these reports being formally recorded, which in turn meant that crimes were not investigated (Strike Force Parrabell 2018, p. 14 & 15)
[3] This inherent lack of consequences or accountability meant that perpetrators were given a kind of ‘social license’ to continue inflicting violence upon members of the gay community. This phenomenon has been associated with what some perpetrators believed was their moral obligation, driven by poor societal expectations. The Bondi incidents together with similar disappearances and deaths of men in and around beats attracted heightened levels of violence and were often associated with a victim’s sexuality or perceived sexuality (Strike Force Parrabell).
[4] During the 1970s, there were ongoing demonstrations in Sydney focusing on what needed to be changed to give homosexuals equal civil rights with their heterosexual counterparts. One of the catchcries of the time was ‘stop police attacks, on gays, women, and blacks’. And this catchcry highlights an important fact: that the police were seen as the enemy by many of these emerging social movements. As for gays, the police had never been sympathetic to their parading through Sydney’s streets. And this antipathy culminated in the notorious first Mardi Gras, on the night of Saturday 24 June 1978; it started out as a peaceful march down Oxford Street from Taylor’s Square to Hyde Park and ended in Kings Cross with police wading into the marchers with their batons, leading to 53 arrests (Wotherspoon 2017).
[5] In 2002, a list of 88 deaths of gay men between 1976 and 2000, potentially motivated by gay hate bias was compiled by Sue Thompson, the then NSW Police Gay and Lesbian consultant. There has been significant media coverage of presumed facts associated with gay hate motivation for each of these 88 deaths.
Reference List
In the Pursuit of Justice. Documenting Gay and Transgender Prejudice Killing in NSW in the Late 20th Century 2017, ACON. viewed 11th November 2018, https://www.acon.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/In-Pursuit-of-Truth-and-Justice-Report-FINAL-220518.pdf.
Kontominas, B 2017, Scott Johnson: Inside one brother’s 30-year fight to find the truth, ABC News, viewed 11 November 2018, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-30/scott-johnson-inside-brothers-fight-to-find-the-truth/9211466
Strike Force Parrabell 2018, New South Wales Police Force. viewed November 11 2018, https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/safety_and_prevention/your_community/working_with_lgbtqia/lgbtqia_accordian/strike_force_parrabell
Wotherspoon, G 2017, Gay Hate Crimes in New South Wales from the 1970s, viewed 11th November 2018, https://www.acon.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/In-Pursuit-of-Truth-and-Justice-Report-FINAL-220518.pdf.
Super – Queer City
Glenn Walls. Super – Queer City (Superstudio – The Continuous Monument, 1969). 2020/21. Colour mirror tiles, wheels & mirror plinth.
Glenn Walls. Super – Queer City (Superstudio – The Continuous Monument, 1969). 2020/21. Colour mirror tiles, wheels & mirror plinth.
Glenn Walls. Super – Queer City (Superstudio – The Continuous Monument, 1969). 2020/21. Colour mirror tiles, wheels & mirror plinth.
Glenn Walls. Super – Queer City (Superstudio – The Continuous Monument, 1969). 2020/21. Colour mirror tiles, wheels & mirror plinth.
Glenn Walls. Super – Queer City (Superstudio – The Continuous Monument, 1969). 2020/21. Colour mirror tiles, wheels & mirror plinth.
Glenn Walls. Super – Queer City (Superstudio – The Continuous Monument, 1969). 2020/21. Colour mirror tiles, wheels & mirror plinth.
Super Pride (Superstudio – The Continuous Monument, 1969)
Glenn Walls. Super Pride (Superstudio – The Continuous Monument, 1969). 2020. Colour mirror tiles, skate wheels & mirror plinth.
Installation view at Uro Bookshop at Collingwood Yards. This work was included in the exhibition”A Strange Space” held at Collingwood Yards.
Glenn Walls. Super Pride (Superstudio – The Continuous Monument, 1969). 2020. Colour mirror tiles, skate wheels & mirror plinth.
Installation view at Uro Bookshop at Collingwood Yards. This work was included in the exhibition”A Strange Space” held at Collingwood Yards.
Glenn Walls. Super Pride (Superstudio – The Continuous Monument, 1969). Mirror tiles and skate wheels.
Glenn Walls. Super Pride (Superstudio – The Continuous Monument, 1969). Mirror tiles and skate wheels.
Glenn Walls. Super Pride (Superstudio – The Continuous Monument, 1969). Mirror tiles and skate wheels.
Super – I wanna dance with somebody (Who loves me).
Glenn Walls. I wanna dance with somebody (Who loves me). Mirror tiles, chain, light bulbs. 2021
Super – New World Order
Glenn Walls. New World Order. Silicone, fibreglass, hair, clothing, paper stacks, 2021.
Super – Safety in Queer Architecture
Glenn Walls. Safety in Queer Architecture. Digital print. 2020
Glenn Walls. Safety in Queer Architecture. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe & Lilly Reich – Barcelona Pavilion, 1929.
Digital print. 2020
Glenn Walls. Safety in Queer Architecture. Digital print. 2020
Pink triangle “Queer Spaces” signs were placed by RepoHistory at several NYC locations in the early 1990s to highlight sites of LGBT significance.
MASSACRE – BODIES THAT MATTER
KINGS ARI, MELBOURNE
1 December – 20 December 2018
Website: http://www.kingsartistrun.org.au/program/massacre/
In November 2018 I held an exhibition at KINGS ARI on the gay/hate murders that took place in Sydney during the 1970s, 80s, 90s and early 2000 called Massacre.
Link to the exhibition: http://www.kingsartistrun.org.au/program/massacre/
Glenn Walls. Massacre (after Felix). Digital Print on paper stack, 2018. List of the 88 gay/hate murders that took place during the 1970s, 80s, 90s and early 2000s.
Glenn Walls. Massacre (after Felix). Digital Print on paper stack, 2018
Glenn Walls. Lost Sole (Nike sneaker). Jelutong wood (Hand carved), pencil on paper, Mirror plinth. 2018
Glenn Walls. Lost Sole (Nike sneaker). Jelutong wood (Hand carved), pencil on paper, Mirror plinth. 2018
Glenn Walls. Massacre (Disco Glare). Baseball bat, mirror tiles. 2018.
Glenn Walls. Massacre (after Felix). Digital Print on 4 x A3 paper stacks. 2018.
Glenn Walls. Massacre (Disco Glare). Baseball bat, mirror tiles. 2018.
Glenn Walls. Massacre (Disco Glare). Baseball bat, mirror tiles. 2018.
Glenn Walls. Image above & below. Massacre (after Felix). Digital Print on 4 x A3 paper stacks. 2018.
Glenn Walls. Massacre (after Felix). Digital Print on paper stack, 2018
Glenn Walls. Massacre (Disco Glare). Baseball bat, mirror tiles. 2018.
Massacre – Opening 30th November 2018
Kings ARI. 171 King St, Melbourne. Exhibition Dates: 1st December – 21st December 2018
For further details Kings ARI
http://www.kingsartist.run.org.au/program/massacre/
Massacre – Bodies that Matter
‘Our blood runs in the streets and in the parks and in casualty and in the morgue…. ‘Our own blood, the blood of our brothers and sisters, has been spilt too often….
‘Our blood runs because in this country our political, educational, legal and religious systems actively encourage violence against us…
‘We are gay men and lesbians.’
From the ‘One in Seven’ Manifesto, Sydney Star Observer, 5 April 1991
During the 1970s, 80s & 90s in Sydney, Australia a high number of LGBTIQ people were violently bashed, murdered or disappeared entirely. Although some of these incidents were reported in the gay press and the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board[1] at the time many remained unreported to the authorities[2] due to cultural and societal attitudes with and within the NSW police force and the wider community tolerance of homosexuality. With the advent of AIDS in the 80s, “a significant media and social response of gay alienation within the context of ‘moral panic’ occurred” (Strike Force Parrabell 2018, p. 13). ‘Beats’ such as toilet blocks, public parks and beaches (Bondi Headlands) where men met other men for sex or social contact became the target of gangs that felt it was their duty to rid and protect the community of such ‘intolerable’ behaviour [3].
By the late 90s, early 2000s with a growing acceptance within the wider community of homosexuality a series of media reports and research papers emerged within the mainstream press highlighting both the injustice caused to the LGBTIQ community and the entrenched homophobia and failure within the NSW police force that allowed a ‘killing and bashing spree” to take place with little repercussion to the perpetrators[4].
American PhD candidate Scott Johnston was only 27 when he died. “It was December 10, 1988, when Scott’s naked body was found by two rock fishermen at the base of the cliff, near Blue Fish Point, just south of Manly, on Sydney’s northern beaches. Scott’s clothes had been found neatly folded on the clifftop above” (Kontominas 2017) including his pair of Adidas sneakers. This is shown in the exhibition as a wood carving. The police deemed it a suicide. Three months later, Coroner Derrick Hand came to the same conclusion. His brother Steve Johnson and boyfriend of five years, Michael Noone is still today not convinced that this is the case. All failed to acknowledge that the location was a well know beat where anti-gay gangs operated and where other gay/hate murders had occurred previously.
The main research question addressed in this exhibition is:
Through sculptures, architectural models and digital prints, in what ways can I reconfigure the masculine/heterosexual dominance of Superstudio’s anti-design grid to a personal interpretation of queer space?
My reading and understanding of this grid argues a social, philosophical and identity position in which to interpret my works, giving the audience a greater understanding in the power of things to form a narrative for the object or space. My aim is to think through these processes via practice, critiquing Superstudio’s anti-design grid to produce work that re-evaluates masculine/heterosexual dominance of architectural space by highlighting an injustice done to a minority.
Research contribution
Architecture’s preoccupation with ‘normality’ has left little room for queer domestic space to come to the fore. I argue that ‘the “normality” of heterosexuality is so deeply ingrained in Western culture that it is not even seen’ (Myslik 1996, p. 159). So entrenched is this understanding that I have found little evidence of the public acknowledgement of queer space in the built environment, let alone one highlighting queer injustices. Few artists have broached this subject. I am interested in creating a personal definition of queer space that was not hidden and is a reaction against normative symbols of masculinity and the ‘heterosexual assumption’ presented by Superstudio anti-design grid.
Inspired by Cuban artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres work “Untitled” (Death by Gun), 1990, this exhibition will be based on research conducted on the gay killings that took place in Sydney in the late 1970s till 2000. This was a period of extreme distrust by the LGBTQI community in the NSW Police Force who symmetrically failed to acknowledge, protect, report or simply dismissed community concerns. This will result in a series of works highlighting the high number of victims and the fact that a number of murders are unsolved. Although there is conjecture as to whether some of these murders are a gay/hate crime, the fact that were not properly investigated at the time is a dark stain on our history.
What is Strike Force Parrabell?
On 30 August 2015 Strike Force Parrabell commenced a thorough investigative review to determine whether 88 deaths originally listed in a submission to the Australian Institute of Criminology[5], and commonly referred to by media representatives, could be classified as motivated by bias including gay-hate (Strike Force Parrabell 2018).
NOTES
[1] While the onset of HIV/AIDS has been seen as a motivating factor for some of the violence, the start of the violence predates that. A report by the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board in 1982 already highlighted the issue, and over that decade, there was ongoing and increasing violence. In 1990 the Surry Hills police noted a 34% increase in reports of street bashings during that year alone (Wotherspoon 2017).
[2] The Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby and later, the AIDS Council of NSW (now ACON) kept records, usually comprising self-reported incidents of gay-hate violence, that on several occasions amounted to more than 20 entries per day. Unfortunately, fear associated with anti-gay attitudes of officers within the NSW Police Force at the time prevented these reports being formally recorded, which in turn meant that crimes were not investigated (Strike Force Parrabell 2018, p. 14 & 15)
[3] This inherent lack of consequences or accountability meant that perpetrators were given a kind of ‘social license’ to continue inflicting violence upon members of the gay community. This phenomenon has been associated with what some perpetrators believed was their moral obligation, driven by poor societal expectations. The Bondi incidents together with similar disappearances and deaths of men in and around beats attracted heightened levels of violence and were often associated with a victim’s sexuality or perceived sexuality (Strike Force Parrabell).
[4] During the 1970s, there were ongoing demonstrations in Sydney focusing on what needed to be changed to give homosexuals equal civil rights with their heterosexual counterparts. One of the catchcries of the time was ‘stop police attacks, on gays, women and blacks’. And this catchcry highlights an important fact: that the police were seen as the enemy by many of these emerging social movements. As for gays, the police had never been sympathetic to their parading through Sydney’s streets. And this antipathy culminated in the notorious first Mardi Gras, on the night of Saturday 24 June 1978; it started out as a peaceful march down Oxford Street from Taylor’s Square to Hyde Park, and ended in Kings Cross with police wading into the marchers with their batons, leading to 53 arrests (Wotherspoon 2017).
[5] In 2002, a list of 88 deaths of gay men between 1976 and 2000, potentially motivated by gay hate bias were compiled by Sue Thompson, the then NSW Police Gay and Lesbian consultant. There has been significant media coverage of presumed facts associated with gay hate motivation for each of these 88 deaths.
Reference List
In the Pursuit of Justice. Documenting Gay and Transgender Prejudice Killing in NSW in the Late 20th Century 2017, ACON. viewed 11th November 2018, https://www.acon.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/In-Pursuit-of-Truth-and-Justice-Report-FINAL-220518.pdf.
Kontominas, B 2017, Scott Johnson: Inside one brother’s 30-year fight to find the truth, ABC News, viewed 11 November 2018, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-30/scott-johnson-inside-brothers-fight-to-find-the-truth/9211466
Strike Force Parrabell 2018, New South Wales Police Force. viewed November 11 2018, https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/safety_and_prevention/your_community/working_with_lgbtqia/lgbtqia_accordian/strike_force_parrabell
Wotherspoon, G 2017, Gay Hate Crimes in New South Wales from the 1970s, viewed 11th November 2018, https://www.acon.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/In-Pursuit-of-Truth-and-Justice-Report-FINAL-220518.pdf.
Glenn Walls - SUPER CREATIVE GRID 
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