Art, Porn and Dressing Up

Took a trek to the Barbican on Saturday. I always love the place once I finally get there, but navigating your way in is such a blinkin nightmare. I arrived in a vile temper due to problems on public transport. This was made worse because when I stood up on the bus to get off at Moorgate station I forgot to ding the little bell thing, so despite that fact that my hulking form was looming by the exit, the driver decided not to bother stopping. Bastard. We didn’t even have little bells in the olden days, it was all so much easier. Why does modern life have to be so complicated?

Anyway, for the first part of our cultural afternoon Toblarina and I saw The Alternative Miss World, a film of Andrew Logan’s drag pageant when it took place on Clapham Common in 1978.

It reminded me of last year’s Vogue Ball where everyone put loads of effort into their costumes and stood around for ages backstage, just to go out and get 5 seconds of fame showing off in front of an audience.

There were some staggering outfits – space men, an insane sea creature with spines down its back, a woman in a bubble wrap gown. I think my favourite look was Andrew himself in his half man / half woman attire, but my best contestant was Nigel Adey, AKA Miss Wolverhampton Municipal Baths. He was a tall, beautiful boy who wore S&M garb, bright red lipstick and kept enthusiastically cracking a whip. His appearance was made even funnier by Molly Parkin’s idle remarks in the commentary … “I once had a miscarriage in Wolverhampton. I think it’s about the only thing to do when you’re there.”

I also loved Miss Peru - a total drunk who would literally fall down the stairs by the entrance and stagger messily across the stage; Molly’s daughter Sarah who was Miss Marilyn and seemed blissfully convinced she really WAS Marilyn Monroe and Miss Piss who was continually wetting her knickers.

Oh, and I almost forgot that the co-host was DIVINE, looking very young and beautiful and obviously having a fantastic time. It was cute watching him backstage, checking his tits and looking a bit bored, then suddenly bursting into life as he walked on stage – pouting, posing, tongue waggling and breaking into the biggest smile.

The winner was Miss Linda Carriage (Stevie Hughes), a queen in a long red wig who was proud to have won without false breasts and with under arm hair. This is pretty de rigueur for drag queens these days, when you think of it.

The film was showing as part of the Barbican’s Panic Attack! Art in the Punk Years series, so we trotted off to see the accompanying art exhibition afterwards.

The displays are set up in different themed rooms with each artist allocated their own little area. We revealed the level of our mentality by spending most of our time near the “explicit” stuff with lots of cocks, fannies and S&M role play. In fact, every time I saw the “warning explicit content” disclaimer I felt my feet speed up a bit. This meant we spend longest of all in the COUM Transmissions room. COUM was one of Genesis P Orridge’s projects, he and Cosey Fanni Tutti put on an exhibition called Prostitution at the ICA in 1976 that was closed down as it posed a threat to moral decency.

This time we were treated to a whole wall of Cosey with her flaps out, posing in magazine photo shots both alone and in the company of another lady. Then there were some artworks made from used tampons that actually made my stomach turn, also some news cuttings about the closure of the Prostitution exhibition and the ridiculous way it was blown out of proportion by the media.

My other favourite bit was the Robert Mapplethorpe room that included his shots of Patti Smith and Debbie Harry alongside others like “Joe” - a man dressed entirely in rubber; a man stroking his rather large knob and an S&M queen pissing into the mouth of another.

Though to my credit I nearly wept tears of joy at the Peter Hujar picture of Candy Darling on her death bed that was used on the Antony and the Johnsons album cover, and that’s nothing to do with porno at all.