Huw Lemmey is an artist and writer. He has published the novels Unknown Language (2020) Red Tory: My Corbyn Chemsex Hell (2019) and Chubz: The Demonization of My Working Arse (2015). With Ben Miller, he hosts the highly-successful podcast Bad Gays and published Bad Gays: A Homosexual History (Verso Books, 2022). Lemmey writes the regular essay series “Utopian Drivel” at huw.substack.com, and writes on sex, culture, history and cities for numerous magazines and journals including Frieze, Tribune, Art Monthly and Architectural Review. His film Ungentle (in collaboration with Onyeka Igwe) was commissioned by Studio Voltaire in 2022, and subsequently was included in film festivals including New York Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, BFI Flare, and the Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, where it received a New Cinema Award.
Huw Lemmey, P Staff, Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, Prem Sahib in conversation
Online panel discussion
Artist and writer Huw Lemmey will convene a panel discussion that considers how artists have documented, created and worked in queer community spaces through the lens of Tom of Finland and Beryl Cook's practices.
These contexts are inherent to Tom of Finland’s work, not only in terms of subject matter but in the way his work circulated through and was made for leather bars, such as London's The Backstreet or Hamburg's Tom’s Saloon. Less known are Beryl Cook’s depictions of gays bars such as the 'Lockyer Tavern', a well-known queer venue in Plymouth which served as a meeting place for gay men, sex workers and local women, or ‘Bangs Disco’, known as 'London’s first gay superclub' in the 1970s.
Lemmey is joined by artists Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, Prem Sahib and P Staff, whose respective practices have addressed the histories of queer spaces, from public cruising sites, saunas and London's disappearing LGBTQ+ bars, to TOM House, the home of Tom of Finland Foundation.
Please note that this event will be held online via Zoom.
Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings (b. 1991. Newcastle, London) are a London-based artist duo known for their exploration of queer identity, urban spaces, and social politics. Their practice is multi-disciplinary encompassing; fresco painting, drawing, video, performance, print-making, publishing and installation. Grounded in researching how various communities have been represented throughout history, they interpret social and political issues by drawing from art history and archives. Their work invites viewers to question their relationships with space, power dynamics, social hierarchy, class, order, and obedience within our public spaces.
The work of Prem Sahib embodies a poetic and provocative “destabilised minimalism”, referencing the architecture of public and private spaces, structures that shape individual and communal identities, senses of belonging, alienation and confinement. Mixing the personal and political, abstraction and figuration, Sahib’s formalism is suggestive of the body as well as its absence, drawing attention to traces of touch and frameworks of looking. In past works, Sahib’s aesthetic draws heavily on the environments and interiors of saunas, clubs and public cruising venues, exploring personal and communal histories via the architecture of public and private queer spaces.
Recent exhibitions include The Life Cycle of a Flea, a solo presentation at Phillida Reid, London (October 2023) and forms of the surrounding futures, the 12th Göteborg Biennial for Contemporary Art, curated by João Laia (September - November 2023). Sahib’s work has been shown widely institutionally including solo exhibitions Balconies, Kunstverein Hamburg (2017) and Side On, ICA London (2015) as well in group shows at Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE; Migros Museum, Zürich, Switzerland; Whitechapel Gallery; Hayward Gallery, London; KW Institute of Art, Berlin, Germany; Des Moines Art Centre, Iowa, USA; and the Gwangju Biennale, South Korea.
P. Staff is an artist based in Los Angeles, USA and London, UK. Staff's interdisciplinary practice explores the interpretation, regulation and discipline of queer and trans bodies. Between 2012 and 2016 they worked extensively with the Tom of Finland Foundation and its archives. Solo exhibitions have been held at Kunsthalle Basel (2023); LUMA, Arles (2021); Serpentine Galleries, London (2019); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2019); and Chisenhale Gallery, London (2015). Selected group exhibitions include the Whitney Biennale, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2024); 59th Venice Biennale (2022); and 13th Shanghai Biennale (2021).
Beryl Cook, Bangs Disco, 1977. Image courtesy of the Beryl Cook Estate.
Tom of Finland, Untitled (Study for the 'Cycle Club Initiation' series), c. 1960. Image courtesy of Tom of Finland Foundation.