Shown as part of Class Matters (2-21 May 2024, Annex Gallery, Glasgow School of Art), this is a kind of developmental work, unsure of its place (on a wall) and more concerned with the text that supported it… Huge thanks to Deborah Jackson, James Hutchinson & Elizabeth Hodson.

All teenage bedrooms are sites of cultural production. In mine I dressed in the costumes of the men I admired – the Ray-ban Wayfarers of Queen’s drummer Roger (Meadows) Taylor, the brown raglan-sleeved coat and turned-up Levis of Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club, black suit jacket collars covered in enamel badges bought in the Savoy Centre, just like Robert Lindsay in Citizen Smith and Rik Mayall in The Young Ones. Though a limited budget meant compromise, I reproduced these looks as best as I could, transforming myself into the objects of my ill-defined desire. Better that than being the object of someone else’s.

I bought white cotton pants directly from the Queen Fanclub, of which I was a paid-up member. Printed on the crotch was the Queen crest, designed by Freddie Mercury in 1973. The pants’ version was a later design that retained the zodiac signs of the four members of the band – two lions for Leos John Deacon and Roger Taylor, a crab for Cancerian Brian May (and for me!) and two fairies for Virgo Freddie. In 1984 I sent a drawing I’d made of Brian May to Jackie, the president of the fanclub. Eighteen months later it was returned, signed by Brian, but by then I’d finished with Queen, and the pants had been thrown away. I’d left the bedroom to drink cokes with grown-up boys who listened to heavy metal in long-gone bars in Glasgow. Out there was the possibility, both tantalising and terrifying, of being enveloped by the red quilted satin lining of a black leather biker jacket, placed over my shoulders while its owner walked me to the bus stop.