‘Unruly rubber’: Brenton Heath-Kerr’s costume and the queer agency of latex

Abstract

Brenton Heath-Kerr was a performance artist living and working in Sydney, Australia, who died of AIDS-related complications at the age of 33 in 1995. Heath-Kerr designed, wore and staged interventions in disruptive costumes in the Sydney nightlife of his time. Grappling with declining health, his designs came to address his own mortality, exemplified by an intervention in the now unwearable costume ‘Self Portrait in Latex’ (1994). Rubber objects trouble the archival project, becoming ‘vulnerable’ or ‘unruly’ under different systemic conditions. ‘Unruly rubber’ considers the queer-ecological dimensions of latex, its material affinities in Heath-Kerr’s designs, in kink ecologies and in fashion more generally. Drawing from a framework of new materialism and queer theory, beside qualitative visual analysis, the argument proceeds with attention to archives, ephemera and the anecdote. ‘Unruly rubber’ asserts the agency of latex in queer assemblages, which continues to enact with and upon human design, desire and experience today.