A Taste of Honey

2024, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, US.

In May 1966, two separate productions of the play “A Taste of Honey” by Shelagh Delaney were staged at the Noble Center auditorium in St. Lawrence University. The play included a gay character (Geoffrey), making it one of the earliest documented examples of queering space at the university. It was notable for being performed during a time same-sexsexual activity between consenting adults was illegal in New York, and homosexuality was still classified as a mental illness in the US. Taking its title directly from the play, “A Taste of Honey” is a body of work that acknowledges, explores, and expands the momentum of queer energy from this moment in history.

“A Taste of Honey” was developed, curated, and scheduled by Hawkfish for St. Lawrence University. It is a series of digital interventions that allow Hawkfish to bypass formal systems and queer space on their own terms. The campus gallery becomes a rip in space and time that allows queer matter to flow in from an unknown queer realm, matter that actively seeks to puncture order, control, and heteronormativity. Rose pink tentacles burst through the floors and walls, unabashedly disrupting architectonics, crystallising the air into seductive raw minerals. Smooth, shaped, totemic, metals and plastics form artifacts that expand the lexicology of the queer body and its often-troubled relationship with the world around it. Indoor grass is planted and left to indefinitely grow in any direction it pleases beyond physical and political boundaries. The gallery becomes a flicker of Fuchsian light, a garden before Eden, a taste of honey.