Design: John Gibbs Rivers Oram Press / London 1990 Funded by Arts Council England
I met Tessa Boffin in 1988 at an AIDS and Photography meeting at the then London Lesbian and Gay Centre. We decided to collaborate on an exhibiton and book project about AIDS and representation in the UK. This was partly because a lot of the discourse was American dominated and partly becasue we wanted to make a pro-sex and pro-queer HIV project to counter the British government's response.
"The book and exhibition launched with it represent a powerful exploration of both image and text of the AIDS crisis. Different voices reveal the profound inadequacies in our attitude to disease. The contributors disrupt the politically-laden mythology of HIV and AIDS, and affirm the persistence of love and desire in the face of death.
More than an interruption to personal life, AIDS has stimulated an erruption in creative life. By wresting control of the imagery of AIDS Ecstatic Antibodies demystifies icons like the nation and the family and illuminates attitudes to gender, sexuality, racial and moral diversity."
The artists and writers were: Emily Andersen Tessa Boffin Mehboob Dada Rotimi Fani-Kayode Margot Farnham Nicola Field Joy Gregory Sunil Gupta Lynn Hewett Alex hirst Isaac Julien Stuart Marshall Roberta McGrath Mandy Merck Pratibha Parmar David Ruffell Allan deSouza S R Tobe Simon Watney Jeffrey Weeks