Gay Sydney: A Memoir by William Yang
Image: Gay Sydney: A Memoir. image: William Yang
For over five decades Sydney’s gay community has been at the centre of photographer William’s Yang’s life and work.
Gay Sydney: A Memoir is curated from just some of Yang’s more than half a million images of Sydney’s gay scene, and brings it into focus both personally for Yang and culturally and socially for viewers of this show.
Yang’s journey into gay Sydney starts with the drag shows at the historic venues of Capriccio’s, Chez Ivy and Ken’s Karate Klub, years before mainstream media even contemplated drag beyond including it into salacious and distancing documentary style reports.
The early seventies saw younger and less inhibited gays flock to inner Sydney, sharing houses, and starting an emerging gay culture that included performance, art and abundant hedonism.
In the show Gay Sydney: A Memoir, Yang brings takes this new lifestyle into another realm with the first march by gay and lesbians protesting the anti-gay laws and police harassment which introduces a political perspective into the movement.
Yang’s eye now focuses on not only the personal but to the way that the movement goes about using Mardi Gras and art to convey sharp political comment often cloaked in camp fun.
When HIV/AIDS hit the community, Yang covered not only the wider reaction, but also a deeply personal one, especially with the photo-reportage of his friend Allan’s journey with the disease.
An important section of Gay Sydney: A Memoir is given over to how the artists in the gay and lesbian community at the time reacted to this life endangering scourge, with Yang’s particular focus on the work of Peter Tully and David McDiamid, both early artistic participants in Mardi Gras.
But thankfully the show is not all as gloomy as this section.
With Yang’s images projected onto a screen that covers much of the stage area, and introduced by his trademark understated and often self deprecating delivery, Yang brings a context and immediacy to his work that is conveyed to the viewers.
The show also benefits greatly from the live musical performance from Brisbane-based musician and composer Timothy Fairless.
Gay Sydney: A Memoir covers an arc of gay Sydney history as it unfolds across fifty years, reminding us of what was there before the ‘now’, how far we have come, and how far we have to go.
We are lucky to have William Yang as our guide and to have this history encapsulated in such a form as this show,
Gay Sydney: A Memoir has been made possible by WorldPride, the NSW Government and the Seymour Centre.
