Florian Hynam is a Leeds based artist, whose work seeks to integrate archiving and historical research with printmaking, textiles, metal work, video and performance. Functioning as an integral part of his practice and separately as a private archive; Florian’s collecting and archiving of vintage homoerotic magazines, VHS tapes and ephemera seeks to uncover and contextualise the valuable, yet often dismissed historical value of vintage homoerotic media. While examining the conservation and cataloguing of these objects. The disposable and overlooked nature of these items means they could easily become lost to time and the insight provided into the lives and desires of gay men with them. This collection of vintage homoerotic material and the processes undertaken to archive it, guides and informs Florian’s practice, which seeks to highlight and explore these insights into homoerotic histories, that are represented within the pages.
F*** Me In An Archive, featured in Tangled Up, represents a body of work which examines the act of archiving these homoerotic objects and the possibilities of archiving homoerotic experience. It is specifically focused on the histories surrounding gay cruising venues and the leather and BDSM scenes.
Florian has recently been working to combine the softer forms of his quilting practice, with hard, industrial metal work. These quilts are made up of fabric, which has been digitally printed with pages from gay S&M magazines and screen-printed fabric, which explores the digitised archive through collage. creating abstracted printed patterns. Leather backed quilts are framed with welded steel featuring metal hardware. Reminiscent of gay fetish wear and the décor and furnishings of gay cruising venues and leather bars. Made up of a patchwork of this screen-printed fabric, a quilt hangs, suspended by chains and implying the form of a sex swing. In front of the swing, serving as a museum mannikin, marking the spot where the giving partner or “Top” would stand while using the swing, are the artists own leather biker boots.
Accompanying the textile-based works, is a steel shelf. Welded and riveted together, the form of which seeks to draw parallels between the industrial aesthetics of archives, gay cruising venues and leather bars. This shelf was made to hold and display the archival box binders containing magazines and booklets from Florian’s archive. Alongside this, is a selection of conservation supplies, used in the cleaning and preservation of paper-based items.
As part of this installation, Florian will be giving performances. These will combine the somewhat sterile acts of conservation and archiving practices, with elements of gay fetish acts. Examining the archiving of erotic gay objects and the erotic potential of archives. Presenting the theory that certain aspects of gay fetish culture, could be seen as being a type of historical re-enactment and as a form of archiving the ephemeral experience of gay fetish spaces.
