Neon Parc

David McDiarmid (1952–1995) was an artist, designer, DJ and activist who made an indelible impact on the intersecting histories of art, craft, fashion, graphic design, gay liberation and AIDS awareness in Australia and New York. Working alongside friends and contemporaries including Jenny Kee, Linda Jackson and Peter Tully, McDiarmid’s salacious, darkly humorous and deeply personal output left an unmistakable mark on the shifting cultural landscape and discourse throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s – “from camp to gay to queer”. Edited by Dr Sally Gray (executor of the David McDiarmid estate) and Dan Rule – and published to coincide with McDiarmid’s major retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne – Gifts from David McDiarmid traces the artworks, clothing, mix-tapes, objects and keepsakes McDiarmid made for his closest friends and family up until his death from AIDS-related conditions in 1995. Photographed as still-lifes, McDiarmid’s gifts forge an at once colourful, playful and poignant taxonomy that points to the act of giving as both creative practice and an articulation of the specificity of interpersonal relationships.