At the Sea’s Edge | Black is not their song, it is ours

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 (the first person 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.”

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‘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. 

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Image: Derek Jarman My Very Beautiful Movie, 1974. Courtesy of LUMA Foundation