LAST CHRISTMAS (I GAVE YOU MY HEART) | 21 November - 21 December 2024

Forty years ago, on 3 December 1984, English pop duo Wham! released ‘Last Christmas’; a sentimental paean to unrequited love that has gone on to become one of the most popular Christmas songs of all time. According to music folklore, while watching a football match with Andrew Ridgeley (the other half of Wham!), George Michael ran upstairs and knocked out the song on a keyboard he kept in his childhood bedroom. Performing lead and backing vocals, and playing every instrument on the track, Michael produced the track singlehandedly and was adamant it would be the band's fourth number one UK single. However, to his chagrin, that year the coveted number one Christmas spot went to the supergroup, Band Aid, and their well-intentioned but highly problematic charity single ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’ (on which Michael also performed).

Michael was closeted at the time of writing and recording the song and the cheesy music video for ‘Last Christmas’, which was set in the Swiss resort of Saas-Fee. Fourteen years after the song’s release—in a defining moment for queer liberation—Michael publicly came out as gay on a US chat show, following his 1998 arrest by an undercover LA police officer while cruising in a Beverley Hills park. At a time when the tabloid press was rabidly homophobic, and fixated on outing public figures and celebrities, Michael took control of his own narrative. When he passed away on Christmas Day in 2016 aged 53, the LGBTQI+ community lost an icon and one of its most passionate and outspoken activists. On New Year's Day, 2021—37 years after its initial release— ‘Last Christmas’ finally made it to number one on the UK singles charts.

The Internet is awash with ‘Last Christmas’ threads and articles that speculate on the queer subtext and symbolism of the lyrics and music video (the brooch!). In The New Statesman, Louis Staples writes of the importance of the song to him during the suffocating heteronormativity of Christmas:

Despite being a glittery, camp spectacle, the implicit straightness of Christmas means that it can be a difficult time for LGBT+ people. Many of us return to places we don’t visit often and are forced to confront memories and relationships from childhood, not all of which are rosy.[1]

In the lead up to the Festive Season, the group exhibition Last Christmas (I gave you my heart) celebrates a queer icon and brings together works spanning video, photography, painting, textile and sculpture that depict love and desire—requited and unrequited, bodily and materially—in their myriad forms.

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Love is a stranger in an open car.^{^[2]}

Love is a walk down Main street.^{^[3]}

Love is the law that must be obeyed.^{^[4]}

Love is what we got goin', baby.^{^[5]}

Love is thicker than justice.^{^[6]}

Love is the drug I’m thinking of.^{^[7]}

Love is every second we steal.^{^[8]}

Love is good and love is kind.^{^[9]}

Love is weird.^{^[10]}

Love is blind.^{^[11]}

Love is for fools.^{^[12]}

Love is a long, long road.^{^[13]}

Love is dangerous.^{^[14]}

Love is careless in its choosing.^{^[15]}

Love is a battlefield.^{^[16]}

Love is a losing game.^{^[17]}

Love is just a four letter word.^{^[18]}

Love is the real thing.^{^[19]}

Love is why I came here in the first place.^{^[20]}

Love is the message.^{^[21]}

Love is my religion.^{^[22]}

Love is queer.^{^[23]}

Love is everywhere.^{^[24]}

Love is all you need.^{^[25]}

Rebecca Agnew appears courtesy of Jacob Hoerner Galleries

Trent Jansen appears courtesy of Useful Objects

Jelena Telecki appears courtesy of 1301SW

[1] Louis Staples, ‘How George Michael’s “Last Christmas” captures the loneliness of living in the closet’, The New Statesman, 21 December, 2018, https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/music/2018/12/how-george-michael-s-last-christmas-captures-loneliness-living-closet [accessed 10 November, 2024].

[2] Eurythmics

[3] Al Green

[4] Pet Shop Boys

[5] The Chi-Lites

[6] Sting

[7] Roxy Music

[8] Culture Club

[9] The Smashing Pumpkins

[10] Toosii

[11] Pulp

[12] M.I.A.

[13] Tom Petty