Unlimited Intimacy
Tessa Boffin, Phyllis Christopher, Sunil Gupta, Stuart Linden Rhodes, Charan Singh
Curated by Abdullah Qureshi
26 October – 18 November 2023
‘Unlimited Intimacy’, 2023, installation view, work by Sunil Gupta (left), Charan Singh (right). Photo: Mark Duffy
Borrowing its title from the 2009 book by Tim Dean, ‘Unlimited Intimacy’ is a group exhibition that frames the 1980s and 1990s as a politically charged time for LGBTIQA+ histories and movements. The presentation surveys critical and radical perspectives on gay and queer sexuality through photographic and documentary practices.
‘The Knight’s Move’ by Tessa Boffin (1960 – 1993) unapologetically challenges heteronormative representations of historical and mythological figures. The monochromatic works reimagine the Knight, the Knave, the Angel, the Casanova and the Lady-in-Waiting as lesbian protagonists.
Phyllis Christopher presents an intimate and evocative exploration of female sexuality, sensually depicting skin and bodily fluids. The photographs compel viewers to confront the interlaced relationship between sexual desire, pleasure, and pain.
‘Cruising Delhi in the 80s’ by Sunil Gupta in conversation with the Indian art historian and gay rights activist Saleem Kidwai (1951 – 2021) is a reflective video work on their shared histories of cruising in Delhi, India.
Stuart Linden Rhodes captures the diverse gay scene and queer club culture of the UK in the 1990s, a period also marked by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, homophobia, and discriminatory laws.
In ‘They Called it Love, But Was it Love?’, Charan Singh examines the lives and worlds of the Kothi community, which is often targeted as a ‘risk group’ in India and troubles hetero- and homo-normative notions of gender and sexuality through a non-western lens.
Abdullah Qureshi is a Pakistan-born multidisciplinary artist and curator. He is a Lecturer in Fine Art at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne.
The exhibition is part of ‘Assemblage I: Body and Politics’ hosted by the Department of Art at Northumbria University.
Charan Singh, Still from They Called it Love, But Was it Love?, 2020, film, duration 8.35mins. Courtesy: the artist and sepiaEYE. Commissioned by Visual AIDS / Day Without Art.
Charan Singh, Still from They Called it Love, But Was it Love?, 2020, film, duration 8.35mins. Courtesy: the artist and sepiaEYE. Commissioned by Visual AIDS / Day Without Art.
Tessa Boffin (born 1960 – died 1993, London, UK) was a pioneering artist and a key organising figure in the UK photography scene, working between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s. Despite a brief oeuvre, Boffin developed a complex body of photographic work that explored gender, sex positivity and societal and political issues referring to AIDS. In staged scenes, Boffin championed lesbian visibility and the actualisation of queer identity through explorations of fantasy. Boffin had a bold, ground-breaking practice at a time of little visual representation and acknowledgement of queer desire. In imaginative discovery, she deconstructed historical heterosexual role models, combining fact and story to reimagine them, deftly weaving historical references, critical theory and wit to propose an alternative space of exploration.
Phyllis Christopher (born 1963, Buffalo, NY, USA) is a photographer whose work documenting LGBTQ+ sexuality and protest in San Francisco has been published widely in anthologies such as Nothing But The Girl: The Blatant Lesbian Image by Susie Bright and Jill Posener (1996), Photo Sex: Fine Art Sexual Photography Comes of Age by David Steinberg (2003), Art & Queer Culture by Catherine Lord and Richard Meyer (2013, 2019). Her recent exhibitions include, ‘On Our Backs: An Archive’, The NewBridge Project, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2017, and ‘Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance’, Nottingham Contemporary, De La Warr Pavilion and Arnolfini, Bristol (2019). She is a 2020 finalist of the Queer | Art Robert Giard Grant for Emerging LGBTQ+ Photographers. In 2021, she presented a major retrospective of her work at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, and Grand Union, Birmingham. Her 2022 book, Dark Room: San Francisco Sex and Protest, 1988-2003 is available through Book Works.
Sunil Gupta (born 1953, New Delhi, India) is a British/Canadian citizen. He studied at the Royal College of Art (MA) and University of Westminster (PhD) and lives in London. He has been involved with independent photography as a critical practice for many years, focusing on race, migration and queer issues. His retrospective was shown at The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2020-21) and The Image Center, Toronto (2022). He is a Professorial Fellow at University for the Creative Arts, Farnham. His 2022 book, We Were Here: Sexuality, Photography, and Cultural Difference, Selected Writings by Sunil Gupta, was published by Aperture, New York. His work is in many private and public collections including; the Tokyo Museum of Photography, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Royal Ontario Museum, Tate, Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. His is represented by Hales Gallery (New York, London), Materià Gallery (Rome), Stephen Bulger Gallery (Toronto) and Vadehra Art Gallery (New Delhi).
Stuart Linden Rhodes (born 1957, Halifax, UK) is a retired Senior Lecturer from Leeds Beckett University. He established the Instagram account @Linden_Archives online during the lockdowns of 2020-21, scanning and digitising hundreds of photographs – primarily to preserve his reportage photography for All Points North and Gay Times magazines. These images had been unseen for thirty years. The archive has gained a substantial following, including articles in The Guardian newspaper, numerous magazine interviews and exhibitions at The Grundy Gallery, Blackpool and Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry. The archive is an affectionate look back on the brash, thriving gay scene of the 1990s. An era in which the pink pound and LGBTQ+ clubbing came to prominence. The first edition of his photo book, Out & About with Linden: A Queer Archive of the North, was a selected study of the pub and club scene from Birmingham to Newcastle, with contributions from luminaries such as Boy George, Julian Clary, Mel B, Paul O’Grady, Su Pollard and more. Initially published by filmmaker Joe Ingham in 2022, it sold out a print run of 500 within six months and PARIAH PRESS published the second edition of the work in a more formalised, archival style whilst retaining the dynamism and excitement of the original.
Charan Singh (born 1978, New Delhi, India) studied at the Royal College of Art, London (PhD). His involvement with community activism around HIV/AIDS informs his research-based practice which uses photography, video and text to explore his ‘pre-English language’ life in India to create artistic resistance through storytelling and fictional fragments to express multi-layered gender experiences and the ephemeral nature of queer desire. His work reclaims subaltern queer identities, sub-cultures that are often defined mainly as victims. His video work, They Called it Love, But was it Love?, commissioned by Visual Aids, New York, 2020, was selected for ‘New Contemporaries 2023’. His project, ‘Arrival’, commissioned by Fierce for the Commonwealth Games, Birmingham, 2022, was also seen at the Vadehra Art Gallery, Delhi and will be seen in the forthcoming ‘The World that Belongs to Us’, The New Art Gallery Walsall. His work, Dissent and Desire, has been seen at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, 2018, the Contemporary Art Museum Houston, 2018, and sepiaEYE Gallery, New York, 2017. He was awarded a Magnum / Photo London Award in 2016, and a Fire Island Artist Residency, New York, in 2017. His portrait series, ‘Kothis, Hijras, Giriyas and Others’, was featured in the Photoworks Annual journal (UK) in 2017.
Abdullah Qureshi (born 1987, Lahore, Pakistan) is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and educator. Rooted in traditions of abstraction, he incorporates gestural, poetic, and hybrid methodologies to address autobiography, trauma, and sexuality through painting, filmmaking, and immersive events. Qureshi’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at Rossi & Rossi, London, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia, and SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco. He has formerly held positions at British Council Pakistan, National College of Arts, Lahore, and the Pakistan Institute of Fashion Design, Lahore. In 2017, Qureshi received the Art and International Cooperation fellowship at Zurich University of the Arts and, in 2018, a research fellowship at the Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research, Boston. In 2019, he joined the Centre for Feminist Research, York University, Toronto, as a visiting graduate student. Qureshi is a Doctoral Candidate at Aalto University, Espoo, and a Lecturer in Fine Art at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Charan Singh, They Called it Love, But Was it Love?, 2020, film. Courtesy: the artist and sepiaEYE. Commissioned by Visual AIDS / Day Without Art. Photo: Mark Duffy
Special events as part of the exhibition preview on Wednesday 25 October 5-8pm
Exhibition Tour with Sunil Gupta and Charan Singh
Starting at 5.30pm, an informal opportunity to meet the artists and hear them talk about their works and photographic practices.
Take a video tour of the exhibition
Out & About With Linden: A Queer Archive of the North book by Stuart Linden Rhodes
A selected archival work capturing the 1990s LGBTIQA+ club and pub scene across the north of England, from Birmingham to Newcastle. Celebratory in tone, it encapsulates a people defiant in the face of the AIDS crisis and discriminatory laws. Featuring a foreword by Harry Clayton-Wright, with contributions from Boy George, Paul O’Grady, Julian Clary, Su Pollard, Heather Small, Mel B and more. Published by Pariah Press.
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