MY POP LIFE

A CONTEMPORARY ART PROJECT BY MICHAEL BRADY (exhibiting as MIKE!)

My Pop Life is a series of posters and installation that share my experience of coming of age as a queer teenager in the late 1980s in Tasmania, where it was still illegal to be gay and punishable by 21 years in prison. This storytelling project presents a narrative that is framed by personal experiences and historical events including the gay law reform movement in Tasmania and subsequent arrests of protesters at Hobart's Salamanca Market in 1988, and the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. These pivotal events placed LGBTIQ+ issues at the forefront of local mainstream media and public debate and had an undeniable effect on my development and self-acceptance as a young queer person.

Using a remix methodology as a means for revisiting my past and referencing the work of queer artists who came before me - such as influential Australian artist David McDiarmid - My Pop Life explores the effects of these events on my emerging queerness and reveals how the colourful world of popular culture (including coded queer culture) offered a means of escape and validation. The result is a series of digitally produced posters and ephemera that reference pop and political posters, magazines and advertising of the era, as well as a collection of personal artefacts presented in a space that re-presents my teenage bedroom as a homemade museum. This contemporary art project seeks to blur the lines between private/public and reality/fantasy, to highlight the power of LGBTIQ+ history, culture and storytelling as affective tools to relate the experience of being a gay teenager and abuse survivor in Tasmania at a time when fear and shame seemed the only pathway to an uncertain future. Through this exhibition, I seek to create a safe space for exploring a difficult past and celebrating 1980s queer culture in all its glory.

Michael Brady, My Pop Life installation, Plimsoll Gallery, University of Tasmania, 2022