“This short animated poetry film explores the ways that queer people have to learn to covertly hide their sexuality very often before and after they realise they are gay/lesbian/queer etc. The film shares personal stories from my own experience as a gay man, and the different ways I had to navigate my homosexuality growing up through ‘covert operations’.”

“As a gay teenager growing up in 1990s suburban Britain, I had to come to terms with my homosexuality and the realisation of finding men attractive. Whilst Dad could be open back then about how he experienced us enjoying football together, it is only now, as this film reveals, can I be honest and open about my preoccupations; that I found football a means to explore homosexual desire in secret. This film was made with vintage footage of a 1996/1997 football match between Coventry City and Aston Villa, vintage footage of rugby matches in 1999, sound and moving image recordings made on a Sony Ericsson Cybershoot K800i mobile phone between 2005-2006, drawings and paintings made between 2005-2007 and 2018-2020 and photographic stills and moving image recordings made between 2011-2020 on various iPhones.”

“This film contains imagery of pages from a very large scrapbook that I kept when I was a teenager in the 1990s for just over five years – my personal private archived of images that in many ways helped to shape my understanding of (gay) male desire at a time when I felt too uncomfortable to come out as gay. It is a self-reflection of my desire as a gay man when I was a teenager wanting to be seen but not wanting to be seen at the same time. It presents an intimate history of sight (mine), of not seeing yourself (represented in mainstream pop culture) and discovering a part of yourself through seeing.

The film taps on a lot of personal and political issues but important is internalized homophobia; ‘can I say that? can I do that?’”

“A short poetry film that shares a personal experience, of me looking up at a window and seeing a boy looking out.

The essence being it can be a small world if you dream big. “What if” indeed.”

“This short poetry film contains drawings of Butlins holiday camp in Minehead, U.K that I made whilst on holiday there in 1990 and poetry that I wrote in 2022. The sentimentality and nostalgia within the drawings of Butlins are ripped apart by poetry that discusses how queer people have been silenced in the past: ‘This holiday camp where the camp was for straights as campy redcoats were instructed by their bosses not to come out’/ This sets up the context for me to discuss my concerns with LGBT allyship in poetry that is humorous in tone but vehemently angry,: ‘You reduced me to a sandwich, who the hell are you trying to kid? Switching BLT with LBT just to make a few more quid’.”

“Love the swimming in the body imagery”

”Love the collision of serious and humour”

“Great surreal sound and vision combination”

”Innovative, sensual and erotic. Engaging and impactful.”

“This short film features photographs and drawings I made in 2006, moving image recording captured on my mobile phone in 2007, VHS footage of a recording of Pembury Primary School’s 1989 Christmas pantomime ‘Cinderella?’, a cutting from The Tunbridge Wells Courier newspaper from 1989 and a self-portrait from 2021.

 CAMP-BELLE looks at my relationship to my alter- ego. First, to Monica, the moniker of a character I played in a school pantomime over 30 years ago, and then Camp-Belle, a fictional character I created in 2007 whilst as an MFA Painting student at The Slade School of Art in London. During this short poetry film, I give spoken word reflections on those two characters and how they provided me with an opportunity to explore different aspects of my identity through the guise of drag.”

“In the late 1990s, London’s Gay Soho was my safe space to explore coming to terms with my homosexuality.

This film weaves across sound, image, time, rhythm and place and is made up of a number of layers both sound and visual layered on top of one another, talking to and informing each other. SEE ME was made during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in London in July 2020. This film includes sections of a walk that I made through Gay Soho, London As I walk, I listen on headphones to the compilation music tapes that I made when I first came to this area as a teenager in the 1990s.I reflect upon the difference between me in 1994 and me in 2020 and how my relationship to this area of London has changed, may no longer have the same appeal as it did in 1994 or a different kind of appeal in 2020.”

“As artist Clunie Reid commented upon this work: ‘What is brilliant in the work is that Lee is troubled about it, that gay culture is not straight forward. The drawings with the irony create a kind of troubledness about gay culture and discloses (Lee’s) personal relationship to it’

The spaces that young queer people are creating for themselves are animated by a constant sense of self-policing, saying the right thing, being politically correct, body image ideals; feeling quite oppressed themselves. The gay male community is very controlling about what you should look like and how you should behave - why is that community stereotyping themselves? Certain subsets of gay subculture promote themselves as generating inclusive spaces whilst containing aspects that discriminate. ”

“This short poetry film speaks about my difficulty as a teenager growing up gay in a heteronormative environment in 1990s Britain, me being a ‘lad’ (a man demonstrating stereotypical almost hyper masculine behaving) and trying to act my ‘lad-self’ to fit in with others (my heterosexual made) by speaking and behaving like a ‘lad’. ‘Sound manly, act the geezer on my Harley. Hide the fact, in my bedroom, I learnt Polari’. It speaks about my fear of acting/sounding ‘camp’/effeminate to not reveal to my friends I am gay.

The poem finishes with sharing how I overcame these difficulties and no longer worry about how I act/behave/fear of sounding camp; ‘I was born with this voice. I did not have a choice. My voice no longer haunts me, it liberates’.

This short poetry film contains drawings that I made in 2005, moving image footage shot on my Sony Ericsson Cybershoot K800i mobile phone in 2007 and photographs taken on my iPhone in 2018.”

“Sparking memories of the seaside, this film is rooted in the Kent/Sussex coast and features drawings I have made on seashells of places/people/objects I made along the coast since a child – my own version of scrimshaw. The imagery is juxtaposed with a poem I have written which explains the significance of the seaside to me, featuring my family and friends. It captures the strangeness of the British seaside using a telescope that operates like a blinking voyeuristic eye. - all the seaside towns I loved going to as a child growing up in Kent in the 1980s. The black and white drawings on the shells are reminiscent of the work of artists William Kentridge and Tacita Dean representing an Englishness and a nostalgia for an England that may or may not have existed. A Britain making do with the beaches that we have.”

“PEER (POEM VERSION) is rooted in the Kent/Sussex coast and features footage of performance art from my personal archive as a performance maker, moving image works from my film practice, and drawings on postcards of places/people/objects made along the coast since a child. The imagery is juxtaposed with a poem I have written which explains the significance of the seaside to me. It captures the strangeness of the British seaside using a telescope that operates like a blinking voyeuristic eye. It reuses performance documentation and footage from my archive as an artist including performances and drawings. ”

“This short poetry film is an imaginary tale written in Polari. Comedy historically comes from a queer identity defence, when it was harder to be gay in public, to be funny like Kenneth Williams who used gay slang Polari to communicate with other gay men covertly.”

“An interesting alternative view of a place I know from my days at work on the other side of Oxford Street - one I passed through on a short cut to destinations further south.”


”I like the animated text and key words of the poem. “Conjectural mystery/architectural” was nice! The mock Tudor place at the end was great. I think I know where it is.”

 
”Love the ending - it all comes together so nicely with the cottage emerging into view as you speak the Polari. Also love the gaps and pauses, gives time for words and images and atmospheres to sink in - sensuous.”

“I really enjoyed this one Lee. A great sense of location and memory. I particularly liked the line “New memories about to be made in spaces so familiar and historied to me’

‘I feel like a guest - along for the walk. Pleasing evocations of time and place, described in a way that E.M Forster might go along with if invited by the likes of John Betjeman..’

‘Haha the guy talking about washing powder… that made me laugh! love this Lee”

“This short comedy poetry film is about me, my partner Alex and Rufus, the dog we dog-sit who intrudes somehow in our relationship. I share my experience of me almost sharing Alex with Rufus whenever he is around with Rufus dominating and me battling this creature by me becoming him by me dressing up in a dog costume. The poem is humorous in tone and uses end of sentence rhyming couplets for poise and wit to dramatic effect.”

“Imagine Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho meets Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes. The poem is humorous in tone and uses end of sentence rhyming couplets for poise and wit and dramatic effect when performed are their sugariness becomes increasingly demonic… the idea of being strangled with a dog lead.

The poem is indeed written for performance; the listeners gets a whole extra dimension hearing me read it, somehow both more soothing and more unsettling as the story veers bit by bit into more ominous and surreal territory as an examination of the uptightness of suburbia and the dark underbelly of suburban life. On the one hand the story feels inspired by BDSM puppy play with the leather fetish kink scene then on the other has the feel of a childhood story book.”