A Warm Reception (23)

A Warm Reception was a site specific installation piece commissioned by AGEOFTHE and Leeds 2023 to commemorate the 1974 Transfemme conference which took place here in Leeds.

Visitors using the installation.

Part of Visions In The Map, a project looking into Leeds's unspoken and unwritten Queer History, the bar of Wharf Chambers was transformed into the Guildford Hotel in April 1974.

On 15th March 1974, Trans people from across the country came together, in the upstairs of the Guildford Hotel in Leeds, for the coffee evening of the first Trans conference in the UK. The pub, now closed down, sits empty and no longer celebrates this event. (More information about the event can be found via the Beaumont Society and West Yorkshire Queer Archives.)

The installation featured; a portable CRT TV playing a 1974 episode of Coronation Street where the women of Wetherfield held a drag show in the Rover’s, magazines and newspapers documentation life in the early 70s and artist original artwork portraying prominent transwomen of the 1970s.  Visitors were invited to reflect on Trans lives and queerness by writing on a blank beermat then sticking it to one of the pub’s walls.

My work was supported by artist assistants Lydia Ross and Seren Oakley and installation assistant Elliot Raine.