Always Remember: the AIDS Memorial Quilt in Hyde Park (1994)

TV Programme 'Grayson Arts Club' (March 2022) featured long term HIV survivor Jonathan Blake making a new panel for the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt.

The original quilt from the 1990s consists of '48 twelve foot by twelve foot panels, each comprising up to 8 smaller panels' each of which 'commemorates someone who died of AIDS and has been lovingly made by their friends, lovers or family' with nearly 400 people remembered (UK AIDS Memorial Quilt). It was inspired by the US AIDS quilt started in 1987 in San Francisco.

In June 1994 the UK quilt was displayed in London's Hyde Park, laid out on the grass alongside sections of the US quilt in the very moving 'Quilts of Love' exhibition. Here's a few photos I took a the time. As always wish I'd taken more and had a better camera!

This section of the quilt was made by women prisoners at FCI Dublin, a prison in California.

'Remembering those who died without dignity and respect. Silence = death'

'Although our bodies are confined in prison, our hearts are free to be with our loved ones who died from AIDS'. Not sure what prison this came from, but if highlights that the prison system in many countries was a frontline in the HIV struggle due to the criminalisation/incarceration of intravenous drug users who were at high risk of HIV.  Many people died from AIDS while locked up instead of being cared for in the community.

'Cumann Haemfile na hÉireann' - Irish haemophiliacs, a reminder of those who were infected by HIV through contaminated blood products.

Jasmine, 24 April 1992 to 26 December 1992: at this time babies were still being infected through 'vertical transmission' (i.e. acquiring HIV from HIV+ mothers) before new drug treatments largely prevented this 

Panel for Joe, Chain Reaction (1980s fetish club held at Market Tavern in Vauxhall); and from Act Up Ireland  - 'don't let our epitaph read we died because of complacency and denial'

There's a great recent article by Clifford McManus in History Workshop on the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt: '40 years on from the first HIV related deaths, and despite amazing advances in the prevention, treatment and support of people living with HIV, stigma still exists. The AIDS Memorial Quilt continues as a living piece of community art through which stigma and attitudes to HIV can be challenged. Every time it is displayed in a public place it tells the stories of real lives lost. It draws the memory of a person, and all those who have died of AIDS and AIDS related illnesses, out of the shadow of stigma into the light of celebration'.

Also a good article by Dominic McGovern at Vice

Hyde Park, 1994

London Club Listings 1982

London club listing from Time Out, 26 February 1982. Before my London clubbing days, and I must say it doesn't sound too great though of course there were many other things going on beneath the radar and not listed here.

I mean less than a year after the Brixton riots was there really a Battersea nightspot called Riots with 'perspex dancefloor, games room and cocktail lounge with resident pianist'?

Elsewhere 'The Best Disco in Town' at the Lyceum would no doubt have been fun, broadcast weekly live on Capital Radio every Friday night with DJs including Greg Edwards.

Le Beat Route in Greek Street was 'attracting second generation New Romantics who've just discovered Kraftwerk' and iD founder Perry Haines was putting on 'Dial 9 for Dolphins' at Dial 9 near Marble Arch. A Monday night in South Kensington might find you dressing 'imaginatively' with 'the nouveaux elites' at Images at the Cromwellian, while the Barracuda Club on Baker Street was also busy.

Elsewhere 'cult' clubs included the Fantasy Attic at Samantha's in New Burlington Street (apparently 'psychedelic'. There was 'rapping' at the Language Lab at the Gargoyle Club on Dean Street, and the Fridge and WAG were mentioned, both of them key London dance music venues for most of the 1980s.

See also:

London Gay Disco 1972

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (1978): Disco

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (1978): Gay clubs

NME Guide to Rock & Roll London (1978): Reggae

Clubbing in London i-D listings, 1984

Clubbing in Sheffield i-D listings, 1984

Clubbing in Manchester listings, 1984

Clubbing in Luton, 1984

1987: Dancing in Brixton and beyond

The Face London Club listings, March 1989

Gays Against Nazis, Leeds 1978

Gays Against Nazis/Rock Against Racism gig at Leeds Poly, 30 June 1978 with The Mekons, reggae band Tribesman and Sheffield post-punk band 2.3

source: Record Mirror, 1 July 1978

 

Skibadee remembered on home turf

The great junglist/drum & bass MC Skibadee died last month and fittingly is the subject of lots of memorial graffiti around Waterloo in South London where he was born, particularly in the graffiti tunnels under the station (Leake Street)

Alphonso Bondzie (his real name)

'Skibadee, 1.2.1975 - 27.2.2022'

'inspired, loved, taught and pioneered, world's no.1 jungle and D&B Emcee Skibadee'

See also - Ukraine war graffiti around Waterloo today

MF Doom murals

There was a similar outpouring on the death of MF Doom in late 2020 - these examples from Deptford Creekside: