The Dancing Daffodils

The Dancing Daffodils, 1988-2024

This photograph was taken in 1988 while I was on a youth training scheme in Bradford. Responding to the poem by Wordsworth titled, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud I presented this still life scene as being in motion, transforming isolation into collective movement. As a working-class queer person growing up in Bradford under Section 28, I related to this sense of loneliness within the poem.

On recently scanning the original colour film negative I saw how it had changed over time, it now holds a new beauty and has taken on additional meaning. The scratches and markings appear to me like scars telling of time, trauma and a history of repression of LGBTQIA+ people. 

Daffodils used to be used as a slur against queer people, and I see this image as a celebration of queers dancing - taking that word and reclaiming it in a positive way. The Dancing Daffodils.

Exhibited for the first time in my solo exhibition From Flowers (Dreaming of Lamorna) the ideas around the exhibition are of growing up the struggles, trauma and homophobia, lack of any positive representation that was particularly around in the 80s. With Section 28 and the Tory government. A young butch baby dyke dreamt of a place where I could just be, a safe place to love and be loved, where things didn’t need to be hidden, A queer utopia.

An edition of The Dancing Daffodils, 1988-2024 as been acquired for the new art collection of soho house Manchester.