Embargoed and Restricted Access
Reason: Under embargo until 25 July 2023. After this date a copy can be supplied under Section 51(2) of the Australian Copyright Act 1968 by submitting a document delivery request through your library
Snugglepot & Cuddlepie Are Gay! (A Pareidolic Whim-Wham)
David McDiarmid once bemoaned that “Each new gay generation reinvents the wheel.” But If we accept the social construction of homosexuality changes throughout history, what continuity can an artist experience with art we redefine in hindsight as homosexual. Taking recent suggestion that the most perseverant confection of heterosexual happy families Australiana, May Gibbs’ Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (1918) is in fact ‘queerly contemporary,’ this project attempts a reading aimed not at decoding the sexuality of the author or characters but at nurturing a sense of continuity (in the studio) which escapes heterosexist notions of biological inheritance and bloodline culture.
