AustLit

'Buried Not Dead is a collection of writings on art, literature and performance, sexuality, activism and the life of the city. In these essays, written over twenty-five years, Fiona McGregor documents performance artists, writers, dancers, tattooists and DJs, some of them famous, like Marina Abramović and Mike Parr, while others, like Latai Taumoepeau, Lanny K and Kathleen Mary Fallon, are less well known. In capturing these figures and the scenes they inhabit, McGregor offers an expansive archive of art and life of a kind rarely recorded in our histories.

'Fiona McGregor’s immersion in her subject matter comes from a deep and enduring involvement in the worlds she represents. She came of age as an artist during an outpouring of performative queer culture, in a community that celebrated subversion, dissent and uninhibited partygoing, and in her writing she observes the shift from that moment towards new forms of cultural repressiveness. McGregor is a participant in her essays as well as a witness – she sees through an artist’s eyes and records what she perceives with a novelist’s insight. In excavating the lives of others, she reveals her own, and shows the possibilities that rest beneath the surface of our culture.' (Publication summary)