eX de Medici: Beautiful Wickedness

61 60 EX DE MEDICI: BEAUTIFUL WICKEDNESS Endnotes 1 Ian Warden, ‘Nile the gladiator crosses swords with a gay blade’, Canberra Times , 16 August 1985, p.3. 2 ‘Current trends update: Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) – United States’, MMWRWeekly [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], 9 September 1983, <cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00000137.htm>, viewed October 2022. 3 Sasha Grishin, ‘Images of desire’, Canberra Times , 23 April 1985, p.28. 4 Gordon Bull, ‘The scandal of eX de Medici’, Photofile , no.56, May 1999, p.12. 5 Virginia Cook, ‘Artist shown as worker’, Canberra Times , 20 February 1986, p.5; Sonia Barron, ‘Charcoal and explanations’, Canberra Times , 28 February 1986, p.11. 6 eX de Medici, quoted in Michael Desmond, ‘eX de Medici: The illustrated woman’, World Art , vol.1, no.1, 1994, p.72. 7 eX de Medici, quoted in ‘eX de Medici’ [interview with Paul Flynn], Artist Profile , no.5, March 2008; accessed via Sullivan+Strumpf , <sullivanstrumpf. com/assets/Uploads/Flynn-Paul.pdf>, viewed October 2022. There are parallels here with the American university professor Samuel Steward, who, responding to ‘the progress of the tattoo complex in me’, left academia and reinvented himself as the renowned Chicago gay tattooist Phil Sparrow in the 1950s; see Justin Spring, Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade , Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2010, p.188. See also Samuel M Steward, Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos: A Social History of the Tattoo with Gangs, Sailors and Street-Corner Punks 1950–1965 , The Haworth Press, New York and London, 1990. 8 eX de Medici, ‘NVAEC 2016: Plenary session 1 – eX de Medici’ [20 January 2016], National Visual Arts Education Conference (NVAEC), National Gallery of Australia , 15 June 2016, <nga.gov.au/on-demand/nvaec-2016- plenarysession-1-ex-de-medici/>, viewed October 2022. 9 eX de Medici, quoted in ‘Tattoos, watercolour with eX-de-Medici + Angelica Mesiti at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris’ [interview with Daniel Browning], Radio National , 8 June 2022, <abc.net.au/radionational/programs/the-art- show/ex-de-medici/13920064>, accessed October 2022. 10 Gippi Rondinella, The Sign Upon Cain: An Overview of the Controversial Art of Tattooing , Alterocca Editore, Terni [Italy], 1985. 11 ‘Meet Kari Barba: Business owner, tattoo artist and painter’, Shoutout LA , 27 May 2021, <shoutoutla.com/meet-kari-barba-business-owner-tattoo- artist-and-painter/>, viewed October 2022. See also Lily Eng, ‘An indelible mark: Trends: Kari Barba, who owns a tattoo studio in Anaheim, has drawn a reputation as a master among American tattooists because of the care and artistry she puts into her work’, Los Angeles Times [Orange County edition], 27 March 1991, p.1. 12 Josh Chesler, ‘“I ain’t having no chick tattoo me”: Kari Barba’s smiling revolution’, The HI lo , 25 November 2018, <lbpost.com/hi-lo/arts-culture/ kari-barba/>, viewed October 2022. 13 eX de Medici, quoted in Kimberly O’Sullivan, ‘eX de Medici: The interview’, Wicked Women , no.24, 1995, p.34. 14 eX de Medici, ‘Disposable icons’, Artlink , vol.12, no.4, summer 1992–93, p.15. 15 Peter Cashman, John Fall and Enric Morello, ‘Fumbling on AIDS causes waste, suffering’, Los Angeles Times , 13 February 1989, p.5. 16 eX de Medici, telephone conversation with the author, 25 October 2022. 17 Bull, p.14. 18 Kari Barba, quoted in Adriana de Barros, ‘Kari Barba: The queen of modern tattooing’, Scene360 , 8 March 2021, <scene360.com/art/122182/kari-barba- interview/>, viewed October 2022. 19 Lieutenant Colonel Contiguglia, ‘A.I.D.S. Beware of “monkey business”’, Royal Australian Navy News Pictorial , vol.30, no.9, 15 May 1987, p.4. 20 Rebecca Lang, ‘Artists who work on living canvas’, Canberra Times , 11 April 1993, p.3. 21 ‘eX de Medici: A brief biography’, in Roger Leong, eX de Medici @MPRG [exhibition catalogue], Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington, 2004, n.p. 22 ‘eX de Medici: Interviewed by Ted Gott, Canberra, 30/11/96’, in Ted Gott and Jim Logan, Indelible: eX de Medici and Kelly Leonard [exhibition catalogue], Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 1997, n.p.; accessed via Australian Centre for Contemporary Art , <content.acca.melbourne/legacy/ files/1997_Indelible_catalogue.pdf>, viewed October 2022. 23 ‘Tattoos on groins for AIDS victims’, Canberra Times , 20 February 1990, p.6. This issue had previously been raised by the conservative author William F Buckley Jr, in a controversial New York Times op-ed, in which he proposed: ‘Everyone detected with AIDS should be tatooed [ sic ] in the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals’; see William F Buckley Jr, ‘Crucial steps in combating the Aids epidemic; Identify all the carriers’, New York Times , 18 March 1986, <archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/07/16/ specials/buckley-aids.html>, viewed October 2022. 24 Michael Bachelard, ‘Gays sound the alarm’, Canberra Times , 26 May 1991, p.19; see also Peter Clack, ‘AIDS man bashed’, Canberra Times , 25 May 1991, p.2. 25 Peter Clack, ‘Nightclub for gays “sabotaged” by vandals’, Canberra Times , 23 May 1991, p.3. 26 Marion Frith, ‘Times of terror for Canberra’s gays, “Surge of homo-hatred” brings with it an increase in attacks’, Canberra Times , 29 March 1992, Sunday, p.1. 27 Michael McCormack, ‘Sordid homosexuality — it’s becoming more entrenched’, Daily Advertiser [Wagga Wagga], March 1993; this article is reprinted in full in Alex Bruce-Smith, ‘Here’s exactly what our new Deputy PM said about gay people & AIDS in 1993’, Pedestrian , 26 February 2018, <pedestrian.tv/news/michael-mccormack-newspaper-column-aids- homophobia/>, viewed October 2022. 28 eX de Medici, ‘Keynote Address: The Tattoo/Fascist Contradiction’, paper presented to the Sixth Australian Print Symposium, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 30 March 2007; see Centre for Australian Art Australian Prints + Printmaking [National Gallery of Australia], <printsandprintmaking. gov.au/references/8792/ >, viewed October 2022. 29 eX de Medici, quoted in Feona Studdert, ‘X marks the spot’, Outrage , no.166, March 1997, pp.49–50. 30 O’Sullivan, p.34. 31 Kerry Bashford, ‘Tattoo you’, Campaign Australia [Sydney], no.217, April 1994, p.46. 32 eX de Medici, interview with the author, Canberra, 30 November 1996; portions of this interview appeared in a truncated version in Gott and Logan, Indelible: eX de Medici and Kelly Leonard [exhibition catalogue]. An inverted black triangle was the symbol used to identify ‘asocial’ (including lesbian) prisoners in Nazi concentration camps during World War Two, while homosexual men were identified by an inverted pink triangle. 33 Bashford, p.48. 34 eX de Medici, telephone conversation with the author, 31 October 2022. 35 Megan Oliver, quoted in ‘Tattoo art: A different canvas’, SkillsOne TV , 2022, <skillsone.com.au/vidgallery/tattoo-art-a-different-canvas/ >, viewed October 2022. 36 eX de Medici, interview with the author, Canberra, 30 November 1996. 37 eX de Medici, quoted in Studdert, p.50. 38 eX de Medici, interview with the author, Canberra, 30 November 1996. 39 Jenny McFarlane, ‘No dumb surface’, in Jane Barney, Jenny McFarlane and Gordon Bull, 60 Heads: eX de Medici [exhibition catalogue], Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Canberra, 1996, p.14. 40 eX de Medici, quoted in Studdert, p.50. 41 ‘“Don’t Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS” [curated by Ted Gott] opened at the National Gallery of Australia, in November 1994. The exhibition captured the relentless onslaught of HIV/AIDS on our society. It exposed the gifted and passionate artistic responses to the direct and searing impact of this insidious epidemic. Artists created work to empower and educate their audiences in the widest sense. It was an exhibition which truly raged against the dying of the light — and sang of the defiant joy to be found in the tenderness of life lived in the face of darkness’; see [Keren Nicholson interviews Ted Gott], in The Annual [National Gallery of Australia, Canberra], no.1, December 2022, p.180. 42 Anni Doyle Wawrzy czak, How Local Art Made Australia’s National Capital , ANU Press, Acton, ACT, 2020, p.231. 43 Tracey Parry, ‘Bad boys, slutty chicks, and tough tattoos’, Capital QWeekly [Sydney], issue 71, 14 June 1996, p.1. ‘Beautiful Wickedness’ is exhibiting not the laminated photocopies that toured in ‘60 Heads’, most of which eX gave to the sitters after that show’s tour ended, but rather Ilfochrome photographs of six of the ‘60 Heads’ subjects that eX produced with the assistance of BICA PROLAB, Canberra, for the 1996 Adelaide Biennial; see ‘Checklist of works in the exhibition’, 1996 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art [exhibition catalogue], Art Gallery Board of South Australia, Adelaide, 1996, pp.131–2. 44 eX de Medici, interviewed in Artscape: Anatomy – Skin [director: Rhys Graham; Big and Little Films, Melbourne], aired on ABC TV, April 2009; quoted in Maurice O’Riordan, ‘Gotcha . . . under my skin: eX de Medici’, Art Monthly Australia , no.212, August 2008, p.33. 45 eX de Medici, interviewed in 2012, quoted in Wawrzy czak, p.229. 46 Jane Barney, interviewed in 2012, quoted in Wawrzy czak, p.228. 47 WilliamMakepeace Arnold, ‘Variety is the spice of life’, Melbourne Star Observer , no.352, 7 February 1997, p.17. 48 See Stephen Corby, ‘Man, dog found shot’, Canberra Times , 27 June 1996, p.2; see also Stephen Corby, ‘Police seek gay community’s help to find doctor’s murderer’, Canberra Times , 28 June 1996, p.1; Stephen Corby, ‘Police search for motive in Rowland death’, Canberra Times , 29 June 1996, p.3; Stephen Corby, ‘Doctor’s murder: Two men charged’, Canberra Times , 1 July 1996, p.1; and Liz Armitage and Stephen Corby, ‘Court told of cold-blooded killing of Canberra doctor’, Canberra Times , 2 July 1996, pp.1–2. 49 Michael Privett, interviewed by Detective Peter Burdett, 30 June 1996, quoted in Jane Cadzow, ‘A shot in the dark’, in Kerry Greenwood (ed.), On Murder: True Crime Writing in Australia , Black Inc., Melbourne, 2000, p.267. In this essay, Cadzow examines in detail Dr Rowland’s execution and the prevailing homophobia of his murderers. 50 eX de Medici, ‘NVAEC 2016: Plenary Session 1 – eX de Medici’.