LOVE FINDS A HOME AT TAYLOR SQUARE

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by Cara Davis

London artist Carl Hopgood will turn the decommissioned public toilets at Taylor Square into Fuck Love, a site-specific installation piece.

Open to the public as part of the 2008 Mardi Gras festival program, Fuck Love will see the toilets become an underground museum of Hopgood’s experiences of gay culture.

It will feature slide projections, video installations, neon signs and a frieze, depicting a stereotypical world of hedonistic beauty that meets a tragic and seedy underground world.

Hopgood said his appropriation of a public underground toilet as a place for art was about looking at a space where “private acts become public spectacle”.

“Throughout modern gay history the public water closet is a place where difference became acceptable and celebrated in the shadow of persecution and retribution – a ‘church’ where men worshiped other men’s bodies,” he said.

“However, these institutions are now being decommissioned and, since the advent of internet date sites and webcam, traditional methods of meeting other men, such as ‘cottaging’ and telephone dating, have been lost.”

One of the friezes above the disused Victorian urinals will depict male prostitute classified adverts Hopgood found in the back of gay magazines – their headless torsos protecting their identities.

The empty toilet cubicles with their toilet bowls removed will become speakers that amplify recorded soundbites of men describing themselves on a telephone chat line.

And on a table will sit a plaster cast of Hopgood’s fists, seemingly dismembered, with images of the same fists projected around the room.

The work, titled Stigmata (self portrait) and Knuckle Sandwich respectively, was Hopgood’s response to homophobic bullying he experienced as a child.

“The obscenity and violence that I associated with fists, and the words ‘Fuck’ and ‘Love’ seemingly tattooed on each finger, make reference to the ‘Love/Hate’ tattoos often found on ex-cons and biker fists,” he said.

“It’s also about unmasking guilty secrets from the perverse pleasure of tough love from violent relationships and the fetishism of the fist.”

Hopgood told Sydney Star Observer he was “very excited” about coming to Sydney for the first time in February.

“I am very much looking forward to experiencing the gay culture of Sydney and the sunshine home of Mardi Gras,” he said.

Fuck Love will be open from 15 to 29 February, Wednesday-Sunday, 11am-6pm. See it at the Taylor Square public conveniences, 136 Oxford St. For more information go to www.greyspace.net.au/carlhopgood.htm.

Snake bites woman in bathroom

Jodie Munro O'Brien

January 02, 2008 04:04pm

A 26-YEAR-old Deception Bay woman was flown to a Brisbane hospital today after being bitten by a snake on Moreton Island.

Energex Community Rescue Helicopter spokesman Colin Brown said the woman was coming out of the bathroom of her holiday accommodation about 1.45pm when a 1.8m carpet python latched on to her left leg just above her ankle.

"Its fangs went into her leg and it then wrapped itself around her," he said.

"A man had to kill the snake to get it off her because of the fangs in her leg and it was that tightly wrapped around her as well.

Mr Brown said the woman was attacked in Cowan Cowan, on the western side of the island, just north of the Tangalooma Resort.

She was airlifted by the Energex Community Rescue Helicopter and taken to Redcliffe Hospital in a stable condition.

From News.Com. Au

Fight In Bathroom Over Dog Send Woman To Jail

In Bremerton Washington A 25-year-old woman was taken to jail for getting into a fight with her boy friend over inviting his dog to join them in the bathroom while they showered together.
The couple got into the fight when the girl told her boyfriend that she did not want his dog in the bathroom with them. The boyfriend said that maybe his next girlfriend would appreciate the dog more, and called her a name.
The naked couple fought with the boyfriend taking a few hits to the head and dislocating his shoulder.
The young woman was taken to jail and placed under a $500,000 bond.

From short news...

When Margaret Thatcher got locked in a toilet!

Monday, 31 December , 2007, 08:33

London: Margaret Thatcher’s visit to the United States as leader of Britain's main opposition Conservative Party in September 1977 took a comic turn when she got locked in a toilet of a Texan hotel.

Thatcher’s American experiences were revealed in documents in the UK govt archives, which were made public on December 27.

Thatcher’s husband Denis also suffered the embarrassment of being trapped in the loo, thanks to a door handle that did not work.

The start of the visit was marred by the failure of the hotel to provide either a hairdresser or someone to press Thatcher's dress, because of which her secretary did her washing at the home of British Consul General Roy Fox.

Fox, an official at the British consulate-general in Houston said that the then leader of the opposition, treated her Fawlty Towers-style stay in Houston, Texas ‘as a joke’, reports the Mirror.

Thatcher also wrestled with the microphone from the host of one event so that she could speak and snub a journalist from television network CBS.

The documents were released at the National Archives in Kew, west London, under laws, which allow top-secret official papers to be made public after 30 years.

Baby Born in McDonalds Toilet Doing Well

Atlanta, GA 12/31/2007 09:27 PM

Danille Miller says she didn’t even know she was pregnant after giving birth to her baby in a McDonald’s toilet. Miller was working the night shift at a Washington state McDonalds on December 21 when she was suddenly in severe pain.

Miller and a co-worker, Jaynae Herrera, went to the bathroom where they realized she was in labor and about to have a baby.

Herrera called 911 and with the help of a dispatcher, delivered a healthy baby boy. Immediately after the delivery, the dispatcher told Herrera to take the baby out of the toilet.

Miller and the baby, who she later named Austin, were taken to a hospital where they are said to be doing fine.