Skin Two Magazine

Issue 8

Words and handkerchief by Michelle Olley

This image changed my life.

I stumbled across Skin Two in 1988. I was a journalism student, browsing the shelves at comic book mecca Forbidden Planet looking for something gnarly like Tank Girl or Crisis. The piercing monochrome eyes of the rubber nun intrigued me. Inside its pages was something akin to the London that I had been hoping to find; the one promised in Soft Cell songs and early style magazines – nightclubs filled with people dressed to the nines in a liquorice assortment of black, shiny apparel. The people in Skin Two weren’t just gorgeous models either. They were all ages, all shapes and all dressing for their own pleasure. And there were women contributors too – photographer Grace Lau, artists Melinda Gebbie and Linda Brodie and writers Stephanie Jones and Miranda Raven. I wanted in, so much so I did my college work experience at the magazine that summer, and also in the Skin Two clothing shop and at the club; later becoming features editor and a director of the publishing company by the age of 23. There are many ways to waste a youth, but this wasn’t one of them.

This artwork is part of The Wall of Sexual Heroes, a collaborative textile art piece featured in our previous exhibitions at the Horse Hospital (2022) and Bow Arts Lab (2023). All embroidered, printed and appliquėd handkerchiefs celebrate unsung heroes of sexual emancipation, activism and innovation.

The Wall is an organic work. If you would like to contribute, please get in touch with The Keeper.


More tales of Sexual Heroes>