Pastel Prick

Geoff Heath

  • 31 May - 21 Jun, 2002

It was the early 1980s. I was 17 and hanging out at 'Backstage', an underground gay club in Auckland city. I wore tight jeans, drank rum 'n' coke an danced to Diana Ross and Grace Jones. Back then things weren't so liberal and we were always on edge waiting for the cops to raid the place and drag out the under-agers and anyone else the didn't like the look of. It was also before AIDs hit so there were plenty of one night stands. I was looking for love in all the wrong places. There was an abundance of hangovers, regret and missing socks.

Pastel Prick is both a response to Robert Mapplethorpe's sexually explicit photographs from the 1980s and a reference to the suburban, dust free bedrooms of  my childhood. Pastel Prick kicks sand in the face of sexual gilt. Incorporating element of childs-play creates both an underlying sexual tension while attempting to reconcile sex with innocence.

Geoff Heath, 2002



Geoff's work takes the form of six lushly charged photographic prints. Brightly coloured and dripping with 80s, they engage on a level of playful humour, rather than shock.