An Exhibition For LGBTQ+ Charity MindOut

What does Pride mean to you?

Pride month is important to me as it highlights the marginalised voices of members of the LGBTQAI+ communities. What I insist needs to be highlighted during Pride month, are the intersectionalities composed of different oppressive mechanisms that swift the experience of individuals within the Pride experience.

How does Pride manifest itself in your work in the exhibition?

The four artworks I exhibit all portray different queer identities within the Black community. I aim to highlight the layer of intersectional oppressive mechanisms and the resilience of these individuals thriving unapologetically.

What does mental health mean to you?

I believe that mental health is something I need to work on every day, by checking in with myself in order to keep myself afloat and content.

How does Pride affect your mental health?

Whilst in London Pride is a month of joy for the majority, I am reminded of the individuals who live in precarious situations due to their identity and/or sexual orientation.

Why did you become an artist?

Producing visual art is my form of self-expression and joy. A place of content solitude and at the same time community, rest, and productivity, thrive and determination.

What are you trying to say with your work?

My work is trying to highlight different identities, shaping stories through a postcolonial Black Queer lens.

What does Pride mean to you?

To me, Pride means celebrating your authentic, queer self. It's also a time to reflect on where Pride has come from – how it began as a protest, and how we can continue to push for LGBTQIA+ rights globally.

How does Pride manifest itself in your work in the exhibition?

I created a new piece for this exhibition called Sapphic Gaze. The vase is bold and bodily; on each side of the pot is a pair of eyes staring out at the viewer. It's a reclamation of my own sexuality and gaze that I felt unable to claim for so many years, and a play on the term 'male gaze', asking the viewer to consider the sapphic viewpoint, which has historically been quite invisible.

What does mental health mean to you?

Mental health is a fluctuating thing. I've had periods in my life where my mental health has been poor, particularly several years ago before I came out. I now have a toolkit that I use to help maintain my mental health. I am lucky to have access to therapy. Pottery is one of the things that I find incredibly useful, as it allows me to have a creative outlet and is such an embodied activity that requires you to be really present in your body with the clay. That is one of the reasons I founded Clay Wild, a travelling pottery studio that aims to make pottery accessible for all.

How does Pride affect your mental health?

Historically, it has been a challenging time, because I have not always felt able to live as my true, queer self. Luckily my relationship to it has changed and I really feel such gratitude to be queer. It can still be overwhelming though, especially when thinking about the challenges the queer community still face.

Why did you become an artist?

Art (in many forms) has always been a part of my life. After school, I felt the pressure to establish a solid career and studied Law for a year before quitting to become an artist. I studied Fine Art at City & Guilds of London Art School. I am naturally drawn to express myself through art – making sculpture, drawing, and writing. I thrive in a space of creativity, and I find it really fulfilling.

What are you trying to say with your work?

My work is designed intuitively, inspired by play, identity, and self-expression. I often do free-writing or free-drawing sessions (stream of consciousness without stopping) and I have started incorporating text and shapes from these sessions into my pieces. I hope viewers find my work reflective and playful, enabling them to think about their own identity, emotions, and authentic expression.

What does Pride mean to you?

It’s a celebration filled with positivity, love and joy! I guess it’s a wonderful sense of belonging to a real ‘family’, of refusing not to hide our true identities – with an enormous gratitude to the pioneers who trailblazed and pushed through oppressive barriers in earlier years. And let’s face it… we know how to have a damn good party too, so it often means a little bit of a headache on the Monday morning.

How does Pride manifest itself in your work in the exhibition?

I decided to do a whole sea of personalities from Prides I’d either taken part in or earlier ones initiated by the aforementioned trailblazers I’d been too young to even know about! But their history is Pride’s starting point, Pride Is A Protest is still true today as we’re still screaming for justice for other LGBTQI souls across the world in slightly less enlightened countries. I chose to do a black and white cartoon of 35 or so people, a kind of carpet of Pride wonders. From the first GLF pioneers who paraded in the early 70s to Fatboy Slim playing Brighton Pride a few years ago. Every Pride goer is important, so I tried to include a nice selection. Including Arnie the dog to big up Brighton Pride’s amazing dog show!

Why did you become an artist?

I loved drawing and painting from a very early age. My paternal grandma was a talented figurative artist and very encouraging! It wasn’t really a surprise that I enjoyed art at school and went on to study Expressive Arts in Brighton in 1982 (I still live in Brighton now). The course was mainly in fine art/graphics with some performance as a secondary tier. This covered both my major interests, art, and music. I ended up making music [and being] in a band for donkey’s years while doing a few cartoon strips in a local comic. Once I’d decided I wasn’t going to be a hugely successful pop star I turned to DJing instead. I still play nowadays often as a duo with my missus. Our DJ names are Kate Wildblood & Queen Josephine but everyone calls us Wildblood & Queenie! 

Over the years I’ve painted banners for clubs, designed flyers, and made hundreds of hand drawn birthday and Christmas cards. But I really started drawing again after a nasty stair falling accident caused a smashed-up elbow and fractured skull. After hospital I started a pictorial diary called The Ouch House which began as a rehabilitation exercise and ended up being a series of six volumes, featuring our day-to-day life, stuff in the news and things I’d dreamt about whilst on Tramadol. Crazy actually!!! I’m grateful though as it really did get the ball rolling and I try to draw regularly now – I work with disabled young people too so there’s a lot of therapeutic art sessions going on in the respite care home where I work!

What am I trying to say with my work?

I particularly love drawing people, so I wanted to reflect a largish group who have really meant something to me across Pride over the years. As I live in Brighton, I’m lucky to have been to every Pride since the first in 1991 (as well as many London Prides too). My sea of faces reflects something of a history, from initial pioneers from the days we marched through the street and got spat and yelled at to the absolute bonanza it has become today’!

What does Pride mean to you?

Pride is a political day of celebration for LGBTQIA+ identifying people. It is a moment for me to celebrate my identity and relationship with my partner who I love.

How does Pride manifest itself in your work in the exhibition?

In my artwork I create a representation of gender and sexuality through Queer Life Drawing and Painting. My Paintings explore the visual language of contemporary art made by LGBTQIA+ artists, with a focus on queer auto ethnography as a method of storytelling and semi fiction.

Why did you become an artist?

The career I chose was based on my experiences of drawing and painting. I can remember sitting at a table and drawing the human figure from memory when I was 3 to 4 years old. Art making has been an intimate way of communicating and also learning about my gender and sexuality.

What are you trying to say with your work?

My artwork is queer. It exists as Queer Art.