It has been just over 30 years since the terms HIV/AIDS came into being. Despite sophisticated health promotion campaigns, infection rates have climbed and in Australia two generations of people have been affected.
Young Australians today may view HIV/AIDS as something that happened to an older generation of men. A newer generation of gay men may feel they are untouched by it.
The perception is that HIV/AIDS is now a chronic but manageable disease.
It is, however, still a lifelong, and potentially fatal disease. While treatments and social acceptance has altered over the years it is still an issue that should not be taken lightly.
To coincide with the 20th International AIDS Conference to be held in Melbourne in July, TRANSMISSIONS: Archiving HIV/AIDS – Melbourne 1979-2014 is an exhibition of manuscripts, posters and other material from private collections and public archives. It will examine the nexus between government, policymakers, health professionals and Melbourne’s gay community.
TRANSMISSIONS will also articulate how design helped to brand political activism throughout the epidemic. It will highlight the role of design in the success and failure of the health promotion campaigns that have emerged from these partnerships.
The exhibition will focus on key events through primary source material drawn from the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives, the University of Melbourne Archives, and other public and private collections. This material vividly evokes the history of the epidemic in Melbourne, and a major outcome of the exhibition will be to promote the rich holdings of these collections.
Although Australia has implemented one the world’s most successful HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns, the exhibition and conference coincide with a 20-year high in infections rates. Current health promotion campaigns have become increasingly sophisticated to be able to reach a younger generation, and TRANSMISSIONS will investigate several of these campaigns.
HIV/AIDS was first described in 1982 by the US Centre for Disease Control, although the gay press had begun reporting incidences of a mystery illness as early as 1980.
In 1983 the then Minister for Health Neal Blewett organised a study tour of the US and returned to Australia determined not to take the same pathway adopted by American health authorities.
Co-curator of the Exhibition and AIDS historian Michael Graf says the model created for Australia was firmly based on principles of community health.
“In the US, marginalised communities, such as gay men and drug users, were not in the scope of policymakers of the day. The major public health response was to contain and confine. Extreme responses included the prospect of mandatory testing of all drug users and gay men,” he says.
“The cause and mode of transmission was unknown. There was no cure and no effective treatment until the end of the 1980s. The first decade of the disease was the decade of invention. The earliest drugs, when they finally arrived, were pretty toxic and had unpredictable long-term side effects.
“The focus in Australia was on how the disease could be addressed and setting up structures to deal with it.”
Australia mobilised quickly, establishing the AIDS Task Force in 1983, and the National Advisory Committee on AIDS in 1984, well ahead of the worst onslaught of the epidemic. Unlike the US model, the medical community worked reasonably closely with affected communities, although tensions did flare up on a regular basis. If it was to survive the epidemic, and it was a matter of life or death, the gay community had to unite and communicate with doctors, researchers and policymakers.
Professor David Penington, who headed the AIDS Task Force, was a key figure in the medical response to the epidemic in Australia.
His extensive papers, held in the Melbourne University Archives, will form an important component of the exhibition. In addition, papers from the Julian Phillips Collection will tell a story of homosexual law reform from the 1970s and 1980s – the period immediately prior to the outbreak of AIDS. Phillips worked with the Victorian Parliament to collect documentation around prosecutions of homosexual men, helping to build a case for decriminalisation, which was finally made law in 1981.
The exhibition charts this period, and reflects the subsequent accelerated technological, social and medical change.
In preparing the exhibition, curators Michael Graf and Russell Walsh have traversed 35 years of history, but TRANSMISSIONS will not follow a strictly chronological model.
“People’s memories and their lives have been seared by the epidemic. We’ve tried to keep a professional distance but when you start to read letters and other personal material which delves into people’s hearts and minds, it’s difficult not to be affected,” Mr Graf says.
“Amongst the sea of official papers and publications, our eyes are often drawn to handwriting as it offers us a sense of someone at a particular time and a particular place.”
As Melbourne was the site of significant cultural responses to the epidemic, the exhibition will also present a unique opportunity to revisit some of the works shown in major exhibitions about HIV/AIDS held between 1989 and 1994. TRANSMISSIONS will present works by several significant artists. Many of these works have not been seen since they were exhibited in the 1990s.
A publication and a comprehensive public program will accompany the exhibition, which is co-curated by Michael Graf and Russell Walsh.
TRANSMISIONS is on show Monday 14 – Friday 25 July in the George Paton Gallery, Level 2, Student Union Building, University of Melbourne Parkville campus.
12pm–6pm, Monday to Friday; 2pm-5pm Saturday
Enquiries: 8344 5418 / gpg@union.unimelb.edu.au