David McDiarmid (1952–1995) was an artist, designer and political activist, recognised for his prominent and sustained artistic engagement in issues relating to gay male identity and HIV/AIDS.[1] [2] He is also known for his involvement in the gay liberation movement of the early 1970s, when he was the first person arrested at a gay rights protest in Australia, as well as his artistic direction of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. From its inception, McDiarmid's art career encompassed, as both subject and inspiration, gay male sexuality, politics and urban subcultures. His creative techniques included: collage, painting, drawing, calligraphy, mosaic, installation, various forms of print-making, sculpture and artist's books. He was a graphic designer, designer and fabric painter for women's and men's fashion, and an artist and creative director for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras street parades.
Born in Hobart, Tasmania,[3] McDiarmid later moved with his family to Melbourne, where he studied film, art history and illustration at Swinburne College of Technology (now Swinburne University of Technology) between 1969 and 1970.[4] In the early 1970s, McDiarmid joined Melbourne Gay Liberation, later travelling back and forth between Sydney and Melbourne, where he helped found Sydney Gay Liberation in 1972; he also contributed illustrations and articles for their Newsletter and helped edit it.[5] His involvement with Melbourne Gay Liberation included designing an early T-shirt and badge. McDiarmid's involvement with Sydney Gay Liberation, a more radical and protest-driven organisation than the larger gay rights and support group Campaign Against Moral Persecution, or CAMP, led to his involvement in a number of their protests. At one peaceful protest, outside the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) headquarters on 11 July 1972, against the refusal by ABC management to show a segment on Gay Liberation (that featured Dennis Altman) on This Day Tonight, McDiarmid was arrested, the first such arrest at a gay rights protest in Australia.[6]
In 1973 McDiarmid met the artist and jeweller Peter Tully; they became lovers for the next two years, and remained friends and collaborators until Tully's death in Paris in August 1992.[4] [7]
After travelling together through South East Asia in 1974–75, McDiarmid and Peter Tully moved to Sydney in 1975, joining their Melbourne friend and creative collaborator, Linda Jackson, who had moved there with her partner Fran Moore in 1973.[4] This period saw McDiarmid hand-painting fabrics for Jackson's fashion designs.[8]