Brady Michaels
My Pop Life
5 March 2026 – 19 April 2026
My Pop Life is a series of digitally produced and hand-printed posters and an installation of personal artefacts that share my experience of coming of age as a queer teenager in the late 1980s in Tasmania.
This exhibition presents a unique personal story through the lens of queer history and culture, using visual storytelling as a tool to share the experience of becoming a teenager at a time when LGBTIQA+ issues were receiving unprecedented local, national and international media attention. Historical events such as the arrests of gay law reform activists in Nipaluna/Hobart in 1988 and the global HIV/AIDS epidemic divided families and communities, ignited homophobia and stuck fear and shame into my young gay heart. But Kylie had just released her debut album, house and techno music was taking over the charts and queer artists were more visible than ever, often shining a light on LGBTIQA+ issues (and our need to escape them) with a mirror ball and some of the best music, videos, art, fashion, design and pop culture in history. Meanwhile, I was a teenager struggling with sexuality and survivorship in a small pink bedroom in a rented flat with my single mum in Tassie, dreaming of becoming a pop star and terrified by the Grim Reaper ad on the telly. Talk about a confusing time!
Using a remix methodology as a means for revisiting the past and referencing the work of queer artists who came before me – such as influential Australian artist David McDiarmid – My Pop Life explores the effects of these events on my emerging queerness and reveals how the colourful world of popular culture offered a means of escape and validation. A grid of posters reflects the news and culture of the time and reveals personal fears and private pop star fantasies. A recreation of my teenage bedroom is a time capsule of the end of the 1980s, filled with personal and collected artefacts, photos, pop posters and high school artworks. My Pop Life seeks to provide a safe space to reflect on your own stories’ and LGBTIQA+ history more boradly, while celebrating 1980s queer culture in all its glory.
Brady Michaels is a multidisciplinary artist, photographer and designer based in Lutruwita / Tasmania whose practice explores autobiography, history and popular culture to reflect on and communicate lived experiences relating to the LGBTIQA+ community and society more broadly. Brady’s work reflects the common shared experience of being human in a complex and ever-changing world, using personal and public archives as materials and a remix methodology to tell stories in words and pictures.