This event celebrates the publication of Dr Flora Dunster’s Hurled Towards the Future: Lesbian Photography and Queer Imagination in 1980s London (Paul Mellon Centre/Yale University Press 2026).
Hurled Towards the Future is the first art-historical account of photography from London’s lesbian sex-radical scene. It explores how lesbian photographers in late 1980s and early 1990s London worked within a climate of resistance and possibility to imagine—and create—a queer future. Focusing on the work of Tessa Boffin and Del LaGrace Volcano, this book argues that, through their photography, these artists made a critical contribution to the reclamation of “queer” as both a political identification and an aesthetic practice.
Following a lecture, Flora will be joined in conversation by Dr Laura Guy.
This event is organised by Dr Catherine Grant, Reader and Vice-Dean for Education, ĢƵ Institute of Art.
With contributions from:
Dr. Flora Dunster, Central Saint Martins
Flora Dunster is a London-based writer, researcher and Senior Lecturer at Central Saint Martins, where she is Course Leader of MA Contemporary Photography and Theory. Her work centres on critical histories and theories of photography, and in particular queer and lesbian work in the UK during the 1980s and 90s. She is the author of Hurled Towards the Future: Lesbian Photography and Queer Imagination in 1980s London (Paul Mellon Centre/Yale University Press 2026) and co-author of Photography—A Queer History with Theo Gordon (Octopus/Ilex 2024).
Dr. Laura Guy, Glasgow School of Art
Laura Guy is a Reader in Gender, Sexuality and Culture at the Glasgow School of Art. She is editor of Phyllis Christopher’s artist monograph Dark Room: San Francisco Sex and Politics, 1988-2003 (Book Works, 2022) and co-editor, with Glyn Davis, of Queer Print in Europe (Bloomsbury, 2022). With Fiona Anderson, Flora Dunster and Theo Gordon, she is co-editor of a special issue of British Art Studies dedicated to ‘Queer Art in Britain since the 1980s’ (2025).