Perspectives on life and death, grief and activism, community and care
This two-part program features conversations and workshops reflecting on life and death, grief and activism, community and care. Each event provides an opportunity to hear from invited community members who will share their research and lived experiences in an open conversation. This will be followed by a guided workshop to encourage collective participation in the spirit of remembrance, creativity, celebration, and resistance.
Black is not their song, it is ours
Join Benjamin Riley in conversation with Lloyd Grosse and Kate Manlik as they reflect on HIV/AIDS activism and grief in Australia and its legacies in the contemporary queer imagination. Lloyd Grosse (one of the first to publicly disclose his HIV status in Australia) revisits local community initiatives, and Kate Manlik shares the perspectives and contributions of lesbians and queer women to HIV activism. Peach Pettigrew will then facilitate a collaborative workshop to create a floral arrangement offering participants a transformative space to connect with grief, and honour their loved ones.
Derek Jarman’s book Chroma: A Book of Colour – June ’93 (1995) offers insight into colour, form, memory, materiality, and culture. In reflecting on black as a marker for the absence of colour, Jarman wrote: “Is black hopeless? Doesn’t every dark thundercloud have a silver lining? In black lies the possibility of hope… it is against this black that the rainbow shines like the stars.”
‘At the Sea’s Edge’ is presented in conjunction with ‘Derek Jarman: Delphinium Days’ at UNSW Galleries from 14 February – 4 May 2025.
The program takes inspiration from Derek Jarman’s Garden (1995) – a collection of diary entries and poems reflecting his sense of mortality and living on borrowed time. They were printed alongside photographs of his evolving garden at Dungeness, flourishing despite its harsh environment. For Jarman, gardening nourished him throughout his life; the garden was an “anchor” and a site where the edges of grief and loss met resilience and joy:
Here at the sea’s edge
I have planted my dragon-toothed garden
to defend the porch,
steadfast warriors
against those who protest their impropriety
even to the end of the world.
A fathomless lethargy has swallowed me,
great waves of doubt broken me,
all my thoughts washed away.
The storms have blown salt tears,
burning my garden,
Gethsemane and Eden.
Image: Derek Jarman My Very Beautiful Movie, 1974. Courtesy of LUMA Foundation
Lloyd Grosse has been deeply involved in HIV/AIDS community activism and politics since the early 1980s, and was one of the first to publicly disclose his status in Australia, in advertisements aimed at people living with AIDS. He played a vital role in policy reform, serving on the NSW Ministerial Committee on AIDS and the Anti-Discrimination Board’s HIV Group, helping secure workplace protections. He developed essential systems for the AIDS Trust, Bobby Goldsmith Foundation, and ACON. Lloyd later founded Australia’s first HIV-focused PR firm, driving awareness and access to life-saving treatments, shaping public discourse, and strengthening support for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Kate Manlik is a PhD candidate in cultural studies at Macquarie University in Sydney. Their research explores lesbian and queer women’s place in the Australian HIV landscape and has been published in Feminist Media Studies and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. She is currently working on a collaborative project, examining doctoral students’ well-being and access to support initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia.
Peach Pettigrew is a floral artist and community educator whose practice sits at the intersection of holistic funeral and sustainable floristry industries. Her work draws on experiences across education, facilitation and ceremony production, grief and bereavement work, funeral work, death care, and floristry. Peach was also the Learning and Development Manager at Twenty10, and is deeply embedded within LGBTQIA+ communities. Peach founded RU Bouquet to empower bereaved individuals and groups through collaborative flower arrangement workshops.
Benjamin Riley is a Sydney-based writer and researcher whose work explores the cultural, historical and public health legacies of HIV and AIDS, and their ongoing impact on queer communities. Benjamin is also a public health policy advocate, working in HIV, sexual health and LGBTIQA+ health. Benjamin has previously worked as Victorian Editor for national LGBTI newspaper Star Observer. He also co-hosts and produces Queers, a podcast about critical queer politics, with writer Simon Copland. In 2014 Benjamin received the prestigious Victorian AIDS Council Media Award for his coverage of HIV and LGBTI health, and in 2015 he was a finalist for Media Person of the Year in the Victorian LGBTI Community Awards.
