David McDiarmid was an Australian artist and activist whose work across many media records his experiences as a queer man in the late twentieth century. From his early engagement with the Gay Liberation Movement to his groundbreaking artistic response to the devastation wrought by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, McDiarmid’s work of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s charts key moments that shaped his queer community.
McDiarmid was born in Hobart in 1952 and died in Sydney from HIV/AIDS-related complications in 1995. Throughout his short life, McDiarmid produced a remarkably diverse oeuvre in both Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, and in the United States, particularly in New York City and San Francisco, where he spent lengths of time during the late 1970s. The appeal of popular culture and the glamour of advertising, as well as the countercultural politics of the 1970s and emergent politics of queer of the late 1980s and 1990s, are recurring themes throughout McDiarmid’s work.1Sally Gray, ‘There’s always more: the art of David McDiarmid’, PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, 2006, pp. 1–95. These themes allow his compositions to unite the visually pleasurable, camp and ironic layers between commercial and popular culture and the world of high art.
The materials found within McDiarmid’s portfolio of work are wide and varied, ranging from paintings in gouache; watercolour and acrylic on paper; canvas and cloth; drawings in graphite and coloured pencil; collage; found objects, including linoleum flooring; photographs; cut tiles; fabric samples; holographic Mylar (a type of plastic); offset printed works on paper; and laser prints.2ibid. p.23. McDiarmid’s varied use of materials ensured his work eschewed the label of ‘painter’ or ‘sculptor’, and this unfixed authority resonates through his work. He further used this notion by incorporating visual material from advertising; comic strips; fan magazines; commercial graphics; pornography, featuring and popular among gay men; street art; newspaper headlines and promotional material for underground dance clubs.3ibid.
In November 1978, McDiarmid held a joint exhibition with Australian artist, Peter Tully, titled New Work by David McDiarmid and Peter Tully at Hogarth Galleries in Sydney. Tully and McDiarmid were romantic partners from 1973 to 1975 and remained close friends and artistic collaborators. For this show, McDiarmid produced a series of works known as the Trade enquiries collages, 1978, several of which were reproduced as offset lithographs for wider circulation the following year. He later exhibited Trade enquiries again at Hogarth Galleries and produced a series of fourteen large-scale collage works in accompaniment. These large-scale collages are an excellent example of McDiarmid’s multi-faceted artistic palette. Each delicate work comprises a medium-sized sheet of handmade mulberry paper and features mixed ephemera, ranging from small holographic buttons, photographic material, fabric swatches and mixed paper materials, such as Xerox photocopies, confetti and food wrappers.
In 2013, the NGV was fortunate to be gifted this suite of works by Dr Sally Gray, executor of McDiarmid’s estate, copyright holder and curator of his artistic legacy, which were displayed in the exhibition David McDiarmid: When This You See Remember Me held at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, in April 2014. The condition of this group of works was extremely poor due to the inherent fragility of collages, the ephemeral nature of the materials chosen by McDiarmid, as well their natural ageing and history of use. As a result, all of the works contained elements in a partial or near complete state of delamination. Throughout all of the works there was heavily encrusted yellow staining on the paper supports, due to the degradation of the original adhesive McDiarmid had used. This staining had penetrated nearly all of the pieces of collaged ephemera that it was in contact with, obscuring the detail on many items.
When formulating a treatment plan, a major concern was the consideration of the collaged elements that had become lost during the passage of time. Many of the works were without several original elements, which created a prohibitively jarring and distracting visual effect to the work. One work entitled Identi-kit Crisis, 1978, comprised many different Xerox-copied elements of illustrations of facial parts – such as noses, eyes and ears – and many of these pieces were no longer present on the work, now merely represented by a yellow adhesive stain. For the conceptual message of this work to be fully represented, it relies upon the presence of these collaged elements, and without them, the work loses its effect. While the ageing and deterioration of this work also has a place within the story of its historical life and is an important element for the conservator to consider throughout the treatment, the evaluation of whether or not this was more inherently valuable than the artists’ meaning and impetus came into consideration.
A work currently on display at NGV International in the exhibition QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection entitled Labels, 1978, features twelve small identification labels, which each have a singular word printed with a Dymo® labeller adhered to the centre of the label. There is also a small piece of plastic tubing tied through the pre-punctured hole in the upper section of the label, mimicking the appearance of a museum identification label. Most of the labels had fully delaminated from the substrate – the handmade mulberry paper onto which the labels were adhered – or were in a state of delamination, and three of the original labels were completely missing from the work.
To treat these artworks, extensive discussion was conducted with Dr Gray, who was an important aid in determining the extent of intervention that was appropriate for these works, as not only being the executor of McDiarmid’s estate, but also as a close personal friend of the artist. By discussing potential treatments for the work, Dr Gray provided a crucial turning point in proceeding with the treatments and was extremely supportive of a more interventive treatment to ensure the message of these works, as well as the materials, was conserved for future audiences.
It was decided for the works that had suffered major losses of material information, some of the lost ephemera would be re-created using modern materials to fill this loss. For works such as Labels, the three missing labels would be re-created, and for Identi-Kit Crisis a re-creation of the missing pieces of the collaged elements would be attempted. This method of re-creation was chosen for specific works only, where there was photographic evidence of the original work at the time of exhibition – as documentary photographs were used as a reference for placement and creation. Problems arose when an original photograph could not be sourced and for works that were documented at the time of exhibition, but the photograph was of poor quality and the finer details of the collage work could not be unanimously identified. This problem became clear for the piece Labels, which had no reference material, and it was not possible to definitively conclude the specific text for each of the three missing labels. For this work, after consultation with Dr Gray, it was decided that using the original Trade enquiries series as a reference point would be suitable in re-creating the three missing labels using archival materials. These original works are very similar to the collage, and there is one particular work that displays a sheet of labels featuring one-word adjectives, much in the same fashion as Labels. All of the words that appear on the collage also appear on the earlier work. Using this older artwork as a reference guide, the newly selected three words were ‘Faggot’, ‘Fairy’ and ‘Sodomite’. These particular words were selected due their association and significance within the history of gay culture, as well as the labels that immediately surrounded them.
Identi-Kit Crisis mainly comprises multiple copies of the same images within the collage, and there is an existing photograph of the work at the time of exhibition. It was decided these missing elements could be re-created using modern techniques to replicate the existing collage pieces that had delaminated. Copies were made of the original delaminated collage pieces and these were photocopied several times to try to recreate a similar tonal and textural appearance to the existing collaged elements. The ethics of replicating the adhesive stains on the collage elements to match the original material was carefully considered. As the adhesive staining is an example of the age of the work, and an indicator of the material composition, the staining is an important part of these pieces. However, as these treatments were not attempting to disguise the fact that the work has suffered losses or changes, but instead wanting to ease the disruption to the overall appearance and thus the message the artist intended, the staining was applied with restraint to act as a gentle reminder that these new pieces were not original.
Florida to California, 1978, features sixty small, chromogenic photographs adhered to the same mulberry paper substrate as the other collages from the suite. Three of these photographs had fully delaminated and the mulberry substrate was severely yellowed and encrusted with old adhesive. The verso of the three loose photographs presented heavy yellowed adhesive staining, which in some cases had penetrated to the emulsion of the photograph.4The emulsion is a light sensitive layer on the surface of a photograph that enables the image to be formed when the support is exposed to light. The majority of the remaining photographs were in a state of delamination and very loosely attached to the substrate, which had been significantly weakened by the adhesive. No photographs were missing; however, a more in-depth conservation treatment was required to prevent further deterioration and to stabilise the work. It was necessary to remove all the tenuously attached photographs so they could be secured to the mulberry paper substrate using an archival adhesive. Following removal, the extent of the adhesive staining was revealed as there was heavily encrusted yellow residue on the verso of all pieces. Following extensive testing, a tailored cleaning solution was prepared to gently remove the old adhesive residues from the photographs. After cleaning, the photographs were reattached to the substrate in their original positions.
Collages are inherently fragile and vulnerable to damage and McDiarmid’s Trade enquiries suite is no exception. These treatments could not have moved forward without the extant documentary evidence of their condition when they were first displayed and the support and advice of McDiarmid’s friend, advocate and the manager of his creative legacy, Dr Sally Gray.
Stabilisation of the collages using archival materials and techniques enabled them to be shared with NGV audiences in 2014 as part of the major retrospective David McDiarmid: When This You See Remember Me, and several other collages, including Labels; Mardi Gras, 1978; and Gay dollar, 1978, which underwent conservation work, are currently reaching new audiences in QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection at NGV International.
Sarah Brown was Conservator of Paper and Photographs at NGV from 2012 to 2015 and is currently Senior Registrar, Collections & Loans at Bendigo Art Gallery.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Dr Sally Gray for her immense help and support with this project, as well as Louise Wilson and Ruth Shervington in the Paper Conservation studio at NGV.
An earlier version of this essay was previously published in ‘On paper? The 8th AICCM book, paper and photographic materials symposium’, Sydney, 2014.
Notes
Sally Gray, ‘There’s always more: the art of David McDiarmid’, PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, 2006, pp. 1–95.
ibid. p. 23.
ibid.
The emulsion is a light sensitive layer on the surface of a photograph that enables the image to be formed when the support is exposed to light.