The role of queer street art has always to punch up — not down. The recent desecration of artist Scott Marsh’s beloved George Michael mural in Newtown - as well as another depicting a just-married Tony Abbott and George Pell - are the latest in a sustained attack on queer street art; a decades-old movement designed to uplift and celebrate the disenfranchised during times of social/political adversity.
While these acts of vandalism and censorship have been championed as bravery by conservative commentators and religious advocates including Lyle Shelton and Miranda Devine, their comments merely prove that queer street art remains both necessary and justified in its inherent rebellion.
As legendary queer street artist Keith Haring once said, “Art should be something that liberates your soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further.” Haring - whose work often addressed controversial themes of war, politics, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic - was arrested multiple times throughout the '70s and early '80s, when the majority of his chalked works were removed from the New York City subway system within hours by authorities or members of the public, who would later sell them online. However, rather than discouraging Haring from creating further works, the theft and desecration of his art appeared to incentivise their replenishment.
This ability to self-replenish is not only a hallmark quality of the LGBTIQ+ community, but something I’ve witnessed firsthand.
My first ever mural - commissioned by Sydney University as part of the 2017 Verge Festival - was removed after less than 24 hours, painted over after an alleged complaint by one university staff member. I believe the mural was removed because it was queer in a ‘socially discourageable' way; celebratory of sexuality, love, and freedom beyond the confines of monogamy. It deliberately went against the grain of Australia’s long-running campaign for marriage equality — a cause I fought for, but don’t believe encompasses or defines the queer community as a whole.
"Queer street art has always been an oppressed art form," says Jeremy Novy, a San Francisco-based artist and curator of the 2011 "History of Queer Street Art" exhibition. "We are not taggers. We're street artists. This is for social change. It's about doing something better."
That’s what street art does, it serves up the indigestible to those who would otherwise avoid it — confronting the iPhone-bound morning commuter with an abrupt dose of real-life perspective. It provokes thought and reflection in a way that can’t be skipped, scrolled-over, or blocked — in a way that doesn’t oppress the disenfranchised, but cements their rightful presence on our streets and in our alleyways. While the Australian marriage equality campaign sought to ‘mainstream’ same-sex relationships in a way deemed palatable by 61.6% of the country, it’s the responsibility of our queer artists to question and challenge even the most progressive of politics — to paint not only rainbows, but the muddy ground which both pre-empts and outlasts it.
It’s for this reason that queer street art is defined in two parts; by a rebellion against overt discrimination and violence, such as Haring’s “Ignorance = Fear, Silence = Death” mural, as well as the joyousness and optimism needed to engender pride in a new generation of young queer kids, which is today seen in the work of emerging Melbourne-based street artist Astro, whose work celebrates trans bodies and seeks to shift perceptions of normalcy.
In many ways, we are living through a time of regression; when the naked human body — once revered as beautiful — is considered offensive, the nipples of women are censored across social media, and depictions of consensual sex are cause for public outrage. Similarly, we are living in a time when the queer community might’ve been welcomed (however begrudgingly) into the fold of politics and society, but have been done so with a seemingly unending list of terms and conditions. Our opponents, bruised but not humbled in defeat, are fighting for the right to openly discriminate against us. Our trans brothers and sisters are having their lives, identities and families dragged through the mud as political pawns. There is as great a need as ever for pushback — and our streets are the place for it.
For many, George Michael was symbolic of what it meant to be queer; not only unapologetic in his expressions of sexuality and gender, but celebrated for them. Scott Marsh’s mural following Michael’s untimely death late last year was a way of memorialising his courage and all that it represented; giving members of our community a safe place to gather and share catharsis.
But as is so often the case with the LGBTIQ+ community — when faced with adversity, we fight back with our words, art, and spirit, not with our fists.
As Sydney-based DJ Jonny Seymour, one of the people who commissioned Marsh’s George Michael mural, previously told SBS: "The defining moment was [attending the site of the mural] to find people scrubbing the wall clean. [It was] really beautiful to find lovely heterosexuals that I haven’t met erasing hatefulness."
In the days following the defamation of my own mural, something similar happened. University students descended on the graffiti tunnel, paint-brushes in hand, scribbling notes of resilience around one clear messages, painted in large lettering: Stop Erasing Queers.
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