A Queer Collaboration: Derek Jarman and Keith Collins

This verbatim interview transcript recognizes the significant contribution made by Keith Collins (aka “H.B”) to the radical queer visual art practice of Derek Jarman, the mercurial English polymath and enfant terrible of British cinema. In many ways, Collins was Jarman’s artistic ‘muse’, erudite companion, fellow gardener, and compassionate carer during Jarman’s final years suffering with AIDS. As the subsequent custodian of Prospect Cottage and garden until his own death from a brain tumor in 2018 (hence the deferred publication) and “torchbearer” for Jarman’s artistic legacy and archive, Collins’ devotion has been largely overlooked by British art culture, and beyond. To contest this apparent neglect, the interview seeks to resituate and celebrate, a unique example of queer collaboration and friendship between Derek Jarman and Keith Collins, referred to by Bruce Webber as the “greatest love story”. To vivify these aims, the following hitherto unpublished transcript reveals unique insights and vivid recollections based on Collins’ life with Jarman from 1987 until Jarman’s death from AIDS in 1994. Moreover, the Collins interview provides a series of candid historical reflections informed by “lived experience”, from which to re-examine the legacy of a particular English queer artistic milieu during a tumultuous period in British socio-cultural life. After much reflection, now seems to be an appropriate time to release this engaging and increasingly poignant reminder of Collins’ forgotten contribution to the work of Jarman, his unselfish devotion to another’s creative ambition and artistic legacy.