Back in the 1990s, when being a homo still held out some promise of a radical existence, when the “underground” was still alive—though, unbeknownst to most of us, in its pre-internet death throes—the heroes for this juvenile delinquent fag were drag terrorist Vaginal Davis in Los Angeles, New York City punk rockers the Toilet Boys and God Is My Co-Pilot, and, in Toronto, renegade artists and filmmakers G. B. Jones and Bruce LaBruce. It was Jones who allegedly coined the term “queercore.” Her collaborations with LaBruce on the zine J.D.s and a series of seminal Super 8 shorts—the two would also make the feature No Skin Off My Ass (1991) before falling out and going their separate ways—played a pivotal role in rendering the visual language of that movement. In addition, she was a key member of what was arguably the prototypical Riot Grrrl band, Fifth Column. In retrospect, the queercore movement was rooted in escapist fantasy as much as in a politics that sought the overthrow of reality as we knew it. Reading these zines and watching these films fueled my teenage masturbatory fantasies of legions of hot pierced punk boys and cool tattooed dykes in a mysterious northern metropolis, when in actuality the entire scene consisted of just a handful of misfits. This selection of Jones’s films, drawings, photographs, zines, and vinyl records (which one could select to play on a turntable in the upstairs exhibition space) was a nostalgia trip for me, but might perhaps be a baffling wonder for a younger generation able to assume mainstream acceptance of their sexuality and who might be perplexed—or “triggered”—by Fifth Column song titles such as “All Women Are Bitches.” (It’s called irony, kids!)
Fun as all this might appear, it is worth keeping in mind that these works deliberately skirted censorship laws that are still on the books in Canada, which allow customs officials to seize and destroy any work that they personally deem obscene (both Jones and LaBruce have lost work this way, when it was shipped back into the country after being exhibited or screened abroad). It can only be fathomed that the customs agent who destroyed Jones’s work suffered from not only a terrible mixture of homophobia and prudery, but a fatal lack of any sense of humor. In her drawings, Jones hijacks Tom of Finland’s cartoon lasciviousness, substituting sexy, voluptuous vixens for the perv maestro’s leather muscle daddies. The Shoplifter, 1990, shows a braless teen lezzer with half-shaved skull standing before a checkout counter with an empty basket. A chocolate bar sticking out of the butt pocket of her jeans is angrily prodded by the umbrella of a respectable bourgeois lady shopper standing behind her. The bulldagger behind the counter, however, seems unlikely to mind her thievery. Her hungry eyes are all over the girl. In the graphite drawing Reading Magazines, 1994, a leather-clad dyke stands over a magazine rack, cigarette dangling from her lips, reading a copy of True Detective with the headline MAN HATING LESBIANS ON RAMPAGE. In the background, great care has been devoted to rendering the other magazine titles, mainly gossip about celebrities who were either known or rumored to be queer: Kate from the B52s, Joan Jett, Jordan from New Kids on the Block, MADONNA & SANDRA AT IT AGAIN, ALIENS ARE HERE & THEY’RE GAY! This was a time when outing celebrities was a radical and necessary tactic, which Vaginal Davis would take one step further in her zine Fertile La Toyah Jackson, printing “real” celebrity gossip side by side with completely made-up sexual fantasies about the rich and famous.
On the ground floor of the exhibition, a tiny screening area was set up for Jones’s films The Troublemakers (1990), The Yo-Yo Gang (1992), The Lollipop Generation (2008), and the lesser known HOT DOGS (2013). Unfortunately, no one thought to curtain off the area or otherwise block the daylight streaming in from the storefront space windows, making serious viewing all but impossible. The lingering remnants of my teenage self had fantasized a bigger, more expansive consideration of Jones’s work and its influence, and was let down by the condensed size of the show. But perhaps it is just the first step in this subversive pioneer’s ascent to an institutional respectability she will probably reject with two middle fingers pointing toward the sky.
— Travis Jeppesen