Tuesday, May 17, 2011

BILLY MAYNARD - TRANS/TENDER

Billy Maynard, Untitled 10, silver gelatin print, 2010/2011, editions of 10.

Billy Maynard's upcoming debut exhibition 'trans/tender' is already generating a buzz, receiving a full page feature in the Australian over the weekend. Billy Maynard presents 17 images from the series 'trans/tender' for six days only at the Damien Minton Annex Space - 583 Elizabeth St, Redfern.

The suite is also available in a box set which includes this statement by Billy Maynard:


Peppe changed it all for me. She personified on the edge, wrapped up in a sexual ambiguity that is so full on and great. She made the straightest men in uniform turn into salivating animals; it was beyond and above to watch.

The pictures in Trans / Tender are vignettes from lives lived in darkness, outside society, in the world’s newest nation. You see rooms prepared for sex, cars, beds and candles. They pay homage to shadows at night and a river running deep, flowing with the dark feeling that Peppe and I share.

It was there and only at night I would see the light so delicate and unfamiliar. I started to see their rooms lit like nativity scenes - like the manger, waiting for the lambs. The Spirito Santos was everywhere. I started to think about faith, and how the Church ostracises her mob. The picture of the burning cemetery is the saddest picture for me. I think about God a lot now.

Wanting to explore the other side, I find solace in places some people are running from. These images come from trust and respect.  Not the respect of manners and eye contact they taught me at school, but respect as an acceptance of the faults, the sweat, the shit, the corruption, the stench, the sex, and the panic. Through all of the mud and anxiety and internal struggles, they gave me all their tenderness, their friendship.

I was aware the clock of my boyhood had been wound down and stopped, and that nothing would be as it was again. I had seen things that I wanted to keep seeing, that would separate me from most of my friends. It’s been lonely back here, but getting alright.

I drive to my apartment before light, after an unkind night through deserted streets past hungry boys and dogs. Blue, lost and falling asleep at the wheel, this lovely classical music starts in my brain. It’s the only music I remember from Timor. So I have pictures instead.

Peppe loved me, and turned me into an artist.