Bareback Museum: Part 1: Life Drawing Performance Workshop ‘Can I make a Painting if I am too ill Mrs Aids?’

MOCA London invites you to take part in a life drawing and performance workshop. Drawing material will be provided for you to participate or bring along a sketchbook.

The Bareback Museum explores intimacy, sexual health and the management of change for LGBTQ communities and institutions dealing with sexual health decisions about unprotected sex.

Miles Coote, Doctor Angela Hodgson-Teall and Juliet Scott will present part one and part two of a three part work in progress, developing their ideas of a Bareback Museum and communities of health. An exhibition of their artworks and new artworks created by the audience will be displayed for the duration of the weekend.

Part 1: Bareback Museum: Life Drawing Performance Workshop ‘Can I make a Painting if I am too ill Mrs Aids?’

The Bareback Museum is an informative life drawing performance workshop exploring the roles of exhibitionism, sexual health and intimacy. An agency is created about unprotected sex using queer methodologies, live art performance and the notion of a life drawing class. It subverts cleansed and sanitised spaces creating transparency to discuss ‘Bareback’ sex (men who have unprotected sex with men) in institutions where there is taboo and stigmatisation. Conversations about unprotected sex, use of grindr, PEP/ PrEP, the changing perspectives around sex in Bareback communities, and groups with their own philosophies of change; are supported through the process of life drawing and art performance in a museological environment.

During the workshop, artist Angela Hodgson-Teall will ‘draw on the nature of empathy’ in times of crisis (the subject of her 2014 PhD) and will perform with artist and model, Miles Coote, who will recite the performance text ‘Can I make a Painting if I am too ill Mrs Aids’. Audiences will be invited to join in and draw, with materials provided. The workshop will be followed by a ‘reflective layer’ led by Juliet Scott (Tavistock Institute of Human Relations), weaving together the audiences' collective thoughts and emotions and learning from the performance. Scott led ‘Social Dreaming the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations’ Archive’ events at the Wellcome Library Reading Room and for this performance she will also consider relevant projects from the Institute’s archive in the support and empowerment of participants with HIV and Aids; the online research and self-help exchange (SEAHORSE, 1996) and the ‘London Lighthouse’ report.