Leo Maher (UK, 1998) collects research from material cultures, past and present, and the narrative they present tethered to, before reformatting archives into new physical pieces. Often trying to respect one tool or material as an equivalent to the next, respecting the delicate mutuality and harmony as narratives, materials and techniques come together to form conglomerate objects; reincarnations of past selves.
He graduated Cum Laude from the Design Academy Eindhoven (BA) in 2021 and with Merit from Kingston School of Art (2017). His graduation project from the Design Academy ‘Unfamiliar Passions’ was nominated for the Melkweg Award for ‘outspoken talent’. With the series he investigates the history of homosexuality and its dance through time and western civilisation. Each piece explores the heritage of identifiers, legends, euphemisms, deviant behaviours and signalling mechanisms, noting how they transcend cultures and societies before ending up woven into the cloth of modern gay life.
It acknowledges its existence in a material culture where depictions of life events and significant characters are immortalised through representation and icon. Figurative and portrait busts preserve legacies of those once considered socially significant. Trends and movements in sculpture literate a consensus of emotion from the surrounding society. As far back as 30,000 years ago, we discover human handprints made on walls - ‘I was here’.
Leo Maher thinks it’s important that in a progressively liberal society we not only preserve the conventional narratives, but also those not previously considered customary or reputable. The project aims to give medium – voice – to this boundless history of queer legend.
Leo Maher, Gentleman of the Backdoor, 2022, Ceramic, Glaze, Steel, Resin, Walnut, 3D Print, Gold Leaf & Silver Leaf, 74 x 65 x 52 cm, SOLD
‘Backgammon Players’ became slang for homosexuals as a pun on the game. The name ‘backgammon’, etymologically, taking its roots in the 10th century; backside, slang for ones behind/ass, and gammon, the lower, or hind part of a pig, bacon. Describing a game in which one of the players are likely to be sent backwards, and one forwards. Besides the obvious crude sodomitical metaphor.
The term later evolved into ‘Gentlemen of the Backdoor’, which takes root in the idea that during times of prosecution, one of the agents of a homosexual affair would have to sneak in and out of the backdoor to ensure their activities were not caught sight of. This kind of concealment was essential to homosexual men from this period in England as the prosecution they would face under the buggery act of Henry the 8th was wither 10 years imprisonment or punishable by death.
‘Faggot’ was a word once used to describe a bundle of sticks on which accused sodomites were burnt to death.
Other legend describe its origin where the Young, weak, effeminate boys of public boys schools of England were referred to as ‘faggots’. They were sent out into the grounds, whilst the more ‘masculine’ boys played sports, to collect ‘faggot sticks’ - kindling. It was there that they would be sexually abused by the school-masters and elder pupils.
‘Ganymede’, or ‘Loathsome Ganymede’ was a typical term to describe a hairless, effeminate boy queer. Often depicted with a cockerel in his hands. A ‘chicken’ was also an underage boy.
‘Cruising’, an informal term to describe casual sexual encounters in public space, most common amongst homosexual men. Deriving from the dutch ‘kruisen’, meaning to ‘cross’ or ‘intersect’, cruising means ‘to travel around a place slowly, typically in search of something’.
“…cruising remains at once a reclamation of public space and the creation of its own unique locale- one in which men of all races and classes interact, even in the shadow of repressive governments.”.
-Alex Espinoza
Cruising grounds create a refuge. They provide momentary relief from heteropatriarchal social structures- Espinoza likens the activity to the “breaking of a seal…”. They teach us how to decipher coded behaviour and language; of how to see and be seen. They convene a culture and a community.
Cruising, in its simplest form, is to practice in the outside, rebuking the political and cultural forces of the ‘in’.
Leo Maher, Polari, 2021, Shelf, Steel, Copper, Mahogany, Maple, Walnut, Resin, 3D Print, Ceramic, Gold Leaf, 154 x 86 x 56 cm, Price on request
Polari was a language spoken by queers from the late 19th century till late 20th. Polari was a means for queer people to conduct conversations in public, without drawing attention. Attention would have likely got these people prosecuted or imprisoned. Within this period in England, homosexuals would be prosecuted with either 2 years imprisonment with hard labor, or chemical castration. It was a strategy of concealment. A strategy of survival.
It’s a hybrid adaption of the the English language, a gay-slang language originally associated with travellers, buskers, beggars and prostitutes. It was a language of nomads, having its official roots from nowhere and yet everywhere at the same time. It was built by and for the utility of these communities, but lately, in the last century, took refuge in a community that felt foreign and afraid within their own society.
From the same period, Oscar Wilde commissions the Green Carnation as a symbol of queerness. Appropriated from a long standing tradition in Oxbridge, where scholars would dress a white carnation in their lapels on the first day of exams, gradually replacing into shades of deep red to their last; a metaphor for exams being like a battle or war. Wilde notes the rarity of the green Carnation, that it is an unnatural colour for it to behold. He employs it as a kind of satire on the oppressive and prosecutive paradigm of the time; that homosexuality was seen as something unnatural, an unnatural kind of love.
Wilde himself was trialed and prosecuted for his homosexuality in 1895 and faced two years imprisonment with hard labour. He died two short years after his release aged just 46 as a result of health implications from his sentencing.
Leo Maher, Domo-Delicatus, 2022,Fruit Bowl, Ceramic, Glaze, Steel, 3D Print, 78 x 39 x 30 cm, Price on request
The work Domo-Delicatus explores numerable identifiers employed by the ancient greeks and the romans. It is with these identifiers that these former civilisations would be able to recognise a homosexual.
Two and a half millennia ago, the Ancient Greeks had a name for the homosexual man: ‘physiognomics’. They would identify them as having; unsteady eyes, knock knees, palms up, wrists loose and having two styles of walking: waggling his hips, or keeping them very under control.
From a similar period in time, the Romans, referring to them as ‘homo-delicatus’, described them as having their beards plucked and thighs smooth; with a hand on the hip and scratching the head with only one finger, often wearing violet and dressed with white leather boots to the knee or shin.
Ancient Roman pedagogical practices discouraged limp-wrists from male scholars during public speaking. The limpness to them suggested a general lack of control over the body; something anti-masculine.
This lineage between homosexuality and limp-wristedness resurge again come the 18th century where homosexuals are identified with effeminate traits; women of the period would dress in corsets and tight dresses that would restrict their body movements so that the only limb or joint they were left able to gesture with was their wrist.
And again in 2012 we see the media outraged by a sermon given by Pastor Sean Harris in Berean Baptist Church in North Carolina where he instructs all of the parents of the parishioners, the moment they see their son “dropping the limp wrist” to “walk over there and crack that wrist”- so beat the sexual immorality from their child.
We are able to identify the footholds of an identifying mechanism from over two thousand years ago fold and unfold itself throughout time until finding itself still woven into the cloth our societies today.
Leo Maher, Violet Patriarchy, 2021, Lamp, Ceramic, Glaze, Steel, Copper, Plastic, 60 x 60 x 21 cm, Price on request
The piece references Roman London, Londinium, from 1st - 5th century AD, where the most common form of same sex love occurred between master and slave. It was only the passive partner, the one who embodied effeminacy, that would be punished for his homosexual activities.
This paradigm is used preserve authority in a male environment. An early example of the patriarchy’s acceptance in practice, but rejection in theory, of male-to-male sodomitical activity and homosexual behaviour.
Warriors/invaders overcome in battle would be raped by the roman soldiers; or they would be returned to the settlements and raped by the male citizens- infamously with a long white british icicle radish, which would grow up to 10 inches long.
Across the continent, on the Greek Island of Lesbos, the greek poet Sappho began to write of idyllic pastures where girls and women frolicked surrounded by flowers and nature. Of all the flowers she mentions, the colour purple; violet and lavender, most profound, both of which remain the “pantheon of queer symbols today”.
To describe someone as having “a dash, or a streak, of lavender”, is to suggest a kind of queerness to them and their persona. In the 19th Century - records of Oscar Wilde frequently reminiscing about his “purple hours” spent with rent-boys.
So the piece details the early footholds of the rationalisation for oppression, but also an early transcultural signifier, of liberation and of pride - embodied by the colours of lavender and of purple.
About the Gallery
The aim of Galerie Fleur & Wouter is to bring young people into contact with art, to make them feel at home in the gallery and to motivate them to start collecting. This philosophy of an accessible and inclusive gallery is reflected in all our activities. We try to communicate in an accessible way and tell clear stories.
We present artists with a strong story, who create works of art that have an immediate appeal, but then turn out to have many other layers as well. Our artists work in different art forms and we are always looking for cross-links outside of the visual arts. For example by showing fashion designers like Lieselot Elzinga and Bas Kosters. The gallery gives them the opportunity to move in the direction of fine art. Artists who have been ignored by general art history, such as Outsider artists, are also given a platform in the gallery.
The majority of our artists are young and they will grow with the gallery in the coming years. But we also work together with mid-career artists like Jan Hoek and Mai van Oers. We see the gallery, its artists and supporters as a family that, in addition to making a profit, aims to help grow the artists' careers, and increase the appreciation of art in general.
Gallery owners: Fleur Feringa & Wouter van Herwaarden
Feel free to contact us for any questions.
e-mail: info@galeriefleurenwouter.com
telephone: +31 6 57748299
Van Ostadestraat 43A, Amsterdam
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