About to go on show for the first time in
a decade, the UK Aids quilt tells two big stories: one of tragedy and one
of hope, writes Amanda Elliot
Photos Ben Blackall
Reading
UK Aids quilt testimonials can be an emotionally raw experience. Quilt after
quilt, panel after panel tells of yet another life cut mercilessy short.
When you step back, however, the quilt reveals another altogether more hopeful
narrative that has emerged with the passge of time. From our vantage point
in 2007 the quilt doesn’t just feel like it belongs to another century,
it speaks from an altogether different world: a world without protease inhibitors,
civil partnerships and hope. In 1995 there were 1,726 HIV-related deaths.
Last year there were 419.
The UK memorial quilt was begun in the early 1990s by the UK Names Project,
inspired by the World Aids Memorial Quilt started in 1985 by San Franciscan
gay rights activist Cleve Jones.
For the first time in ten years the UK quilt in its entirety will go on public
display during May as part the gay cultural festival Queer Up North.
All 48 panels, made up of some 300 individually sewn quilts, will be hung
in an extraordinary space: an historic 1830s warehouse in Manchester’s
Museum of Science and Industry. Quilt custodians, the HIV charity the George
House Trust (GHT), are behind the Common Threads exhibition.
“This is the first time the whole quilt will be seen in over a decade,
having been stored lovingly but unceremoniously in a supporter’s garage
since 1996,” explained GHT chief executive Michelle Reid.
“It is a unique historical document from the time before the arrival
of combination treatments.”
Reid says it dramatises the ‘before and after’ of HIV in the UK;
before, when the diagnosis was pessimistic and terminal and when friends and
loved ones felt compelled to counter stigma by creating quilt panels.
“The ‘after’, the second stage of the epidemic in the developed
West, is largely invisible in the Quilt - few panels come from much later
than the mid1990s,” she says.
Most (though not all panels) are for gay men, reflecting the pattern of the
first decade of the epidemic in the UK. Appliqué doves jostle with
Union Jacks and dashes of leopard skin. Light catches ripples of silver lycra
adorned with symbols of love and carefully sewn names.
Lives remembered include those of the writer Bruce Chatwin; film maker Derek
Jarman; actor Ian Charleson; photographer Robert Mapplethorpe; gay and HIV
activist Mark Ashton and Queen’s lead singer Freddie Mercury.
“What is remarkable are the extraordinary lives of ordinary people who
happened to become HIV positive in the early years, many before HIV was even
recognised,” says Michelle Reid.
What also strikes you is how many gay men with Aids were rejected by their
families and how few were named in full because of the stigma. But there are
also contributions from families, mum, brothers and sisters, as well as carers
and buddies.
One panel is dedicated to an HIV positive woman with a gay teenage son who
took her own life after developing debilitating Aids-related illnesses.
The tesitmonal says: “She was proud of him being gay. When she discovered
she was HIV positive and developed Aids he helped her negotiate a series of
debilitating Aids-related illnesses. It drew them closer. When her health
went into terminal decline she chose to face her imminent death squarely and
claim it as her own. She called on him to assist her in this ultimate and
most demanding test of the love between a mother and a son. There were no
easy solutions. With his support she took her own life. Shortly after he discovered
that he too was positive. He was then only 17. He can never forget.”
Trevor Skingle made a quilt in the 1990s to remember friends lost, said he
would definitely be going to see it: “It’s important to revisit
on a personal level and re-engage with what’s happened with you life.
It’s not about being morbid or overly melancholy. It is about touching
base with friends you have lost. People who see it can’t fail to be
moved.”
• Common Threads: 1-13 May 2007; 1830 Warehouse, Museum of Science and
Industry, Liverpool Road, Castlefields, Manchester. 10am-5pm
• www.ght.org.uk
• www.queerupnorth.com
• www.aidsquilt.org.uk
“Bill
was a young Ulsterman who died three days before his 22nd birthday. His family
refused to allow the HIV ward in Belfast to be named after him, the first
person to die from HIV-related disease in Northern Ireland.”
“Whenever I got mad with Peter I used to say ‘Fuckin’ Hell!’
To which he always responded ‘Hope so.’ All Peter’s friends
of which there are so many will miss him terribly.”
“Graham, an Anglican priest, died from PCP. When his mother later developed
pneumonia she was treated very badly as a suspected HIV carrier. Until then
she didn’t know her son had Aids. The shock killed her.”
“He looked great in his sunglasses and black leather jacket with white
T-shirt beneath. Mark’s was really sad he wouldn’t see his niece
and nephew grow up.”
“Gary’s picture, plus the flowers and the sentiment are very important
to me and help me continue in my own fight with Aids.”
“Every stitch was a labour of love.”
“Brian
B was a young journalist whose mother was persecuted by her employers when
they learned of her son’s illness. She cannot name her son for fear
of losing her present job.”
“Philip was a very special person who started CARA with Father David
Randall. It is a great honour and privilege to have been given such a wonderful
son.”
“Stephen was only 27 when he died. Carefree and brave on the surface,
frightened and helpless underneath his façade. I was shocked by the
speed and relentlessness of the disease.”
“We will remember him for his generosity, laughter, honesty, glamour,
love, courage, hedonism, music, his dusty house plants and his rubber vest.”
“Your
buddies from the Hell’s Angels didn’t want to know you. We formed
the most unlikely relationship. Me, a gay man, and you, a gay-bashing biker.
I became your only friend, a partner of sorts, as you slipped away. We talked
a lot in those remaining months. And cried.”
“We really can’t afford to go on losing people like this, like
Douglas. Who will paint the swallows after all?”
“The South Wales miners’ reunion will not be the same without
Mark Ashton. We all thought he was great. Everyone who knew him thought he
was great.”
“Dave... What the panel doesn’t reveal is that I miss him like
mad... And I do.”
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