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Midlands Art Papers 8 (2025)

ISSN 2978-5715
DOI: 10.25500/map.bham.00000008
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The online journal Midlands Art Papers, produced by the department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies, connects staff and students with the world class works of art and design in public collections across the Midlands, including our 13 partner institutions.

  • two framed sets of twelve tiles hang on a wall, positioned between two glass display cases

    Introduction: Queer Work in Museums and Galleries in the Midlands

    The editor of this year’s issue of Midlands Art Papers introduces its focus on queer work in museums and galleries in the Midlands. He reflects on the exhibitions, initiatives, and networks that have emerged in recent years and increased the visibility of queer practices at a national level, while also tracing the precise histories of queer work in institutions in the region.

    Introduction
  • A large red ribbon attached to an iron fence

    Positive Leicester

    Telling Histories of HIV/AIDS at Leicester Museum And Art Gallery

    The exhibition Positive Leicester took place at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery between November 2022 and January 2023. In this conversation, Catherine Hallsworth and Jonathan Raynor reflect on the process of creating the exhibition and its impact on the museum’s relationship to LGBTQ audiences.

    Positive Leicester
  • a photograph depicting a smiling figure with gold skin, positioned within an abstract digital space. Their head and hands are visible. They are smiling and hold out their hands to us. Between their hands is an image of a rubber duck in a suit.

    The Collections Community Panel at New Art Gallery Walsall

    Here, Queer, and Beyond

    The New Art Gallery Walsall’s Collections Community Panel was formed in 2021. It is made up of local people with a range of lived experiences who help the gallery reflect and represent the people of Walsall. This conversation between panel members reflects on their experiences on the panel and how queer perspectives and experiences have shaped their work on it.

    The Collections Community Panel
  • two young people holding leaf casts. One person wears a t-shirt with ‘proud’ on it in rainbow letters; the other has a rainbow flag wrapped around their body.

    Nature’s Queer Blueprint

    Art, Identity, and Ecological Kinship

    In recent years, researchers, activists, and museum and gallery workers have embraced the relationship between the natural word and queer experiences. In this article, sophia moffa outlines some approaches from queer ecology and explores how they have shaped their art-based community practices with LGBTQ+ communities in the Midlands.

    Nature’s Queer Blueprint
  • woman in a long flowing dress stands with her head lowered in an interior. In the background, another similarly dressed woman is seated on a chair.

    Uncovering Queer Collections in Birmingham Museums Trust

    Natasha Booth-Johnson reflects on her work producing a survey of objects of ‘queer significance’ for the collections at Birmingham Museums Trust in late 2023. A survey of this nature has been an increasingly common strategy employed by museums and galleries as a way of identifying objects in their collections that can be used to engage LGBTQ+ audiences.

    Uncovering Queer Collections
  • a temporary pink wall with the word ‘Radev’ on it alongside a painting of a man seated in a chair.

    The Radev Collection: Modern Art and Chosen Family

    The Radev Collection is an art collection built over three generations by three gay men – writer Edward Sackville-West, critic and gallerist Eardley Knollys, and refugee picture framer Mattei Radev. In this conversation, Norman Coates, Radev’s partner and custodian of the collection, speaks with Emalee Beddoes, who curated an exhibition of the collection titled Radev in her former role at The Wilson in Cheltenham.

    The Radev Collection
  • Detail of painting - three nude figures stand in a space created from multicoloured, abstract marks. One figure is one the left and the other two are on the right; they look at each other. The border is lined with lightbulbs, which are unlit

    Cissies Looking at Phosphenes

    John Yeadon’s Modern Art, Disco Drawing, perception, and ‘gay art’ in the early 1980s

    Art historian Gregory Salter examines John Yeadon’s Modern Art, Disco Drawing, 1982, which depicts a group of figures in a gay disco, on the cusp of the HIV/AIDS crisis. He explores the artwork’s playful approach to perception and its unsteady relationship to left wing politics and the category of ‘gay art’.

    Cissies Looking at Phosphenes
  • A nineteenth-century wooden interior space with psychedelic walls and floor. Pots and pans hang in the background, and there is a table in the foreground with elaborate desserts on it.

    Would you recognise a queer world?

    The transformative power of Suzanne Treister’s Q: Would you recognise a Virtual Paradise? Entering the Kitchen No.1, 1995

    Zheyu Lin explores the fantastical and kitsch interior of Suzanne Treister’s Q: Would you recognise a Virtual Paradise? Entering the Kitchen No.1, 1995, at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. She traces how Treister combined the home of King Ludwig II of Bavaria with references to 1970s and 1980s British pop music and early experiments with videogame art to envision a transformative queer world.

    Would you recognise a queer world?
  • a bronze sculpture that looks like the upper part of a face. The forehead is formed from five curving, pointed spines, joined with solid webbed planes with curving patterns on them. There are two holes for eyes, with one filled with orange glass. Under th

    {Queer} + {Metals}: Shaped by Us

    Exploring the multiplicity of queerness in relation to metalwork and metalsmithing.

    In 2022, the Craftspace exhibition {Queer} + {Metals} launched at the Ferrous Festival in Hereford and toured to MAC in Birmingham. Craftspace director Deirdre Figueiredo spoke about its development at the launch of this issue of Midlands Art Papers in June 2025. We are reproducing an essay about the exhibition by Rebekah Frank to reflect this conversation.

    {Queer} + {Metals}