Artist as Colourist 1977-1980
Artist as colourist, 1977. They said we were too young for punk. We weren’t. In the late 1970s my art making became queerer and more colourful than ever. Mitchelton State High school was a safe place for punks. We started a band, it was a punk drag band ‘Telex’. We sang and parodied Telex, Kraftwerk and Plastic Bertrand songs. In this photo, taken at Kelvin Grove High School in 1977, together we performed ‘Ca Plane Pour Moi’, a song title which translates into I/we are gliding. I transformed an op shop collared business shirt with hot pink Rit dye, sewed pink sequins on the shirt, silver sequins on mum’s forest green pants, and turned my full white tennis shoes into silver disco pumps. My friends, artists, euro drag band members and anarchic allies gliding in the midst of punk and disco subcultures, fellow students, all girls in French and German classes wore black, heavy mascara, eyeliner, rainbow eye shadow, blood like rouge and we danced, we pogoed, sequined creatures of the night…
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