From mission kid to fashion designer, Larrakia artist Gary Lee's quest to capture masculine beauty

Lee displays a series of portraits that range from playful to erotic.

But he remembers his childhood in Darwin as a "free time", a place where people left their doors unlocked, and he never experienced racism.Lee left Darwin for London when he was 17 and spent four years overseas following the hippy trail through central Asia.Lee has frequently returned to the subcontinent.Accidentally living the high life

Lee told historian Dino Hodge about that chapter of his life in a 1993 interview that was reproduced in a recently released anthology of Lee's work. "I was still thinking of ways that I could do something in terms of breaking down the stereotypes about Aboriginal people," he said.Gary Lee's design sketches from the early 1980s.Lee was ricocheted into a world of glamour and celebrity, and suddenly he was living "the high life"."But you know, the more money I made the more I just hated [it all]."

Despite low pay and long hours, Lee said it was one of the happiest and most satisfying periods of his life.By the early 1990s AIDS was at its peak, with about 1,000 Australians dying from the disease each year.Travelling to communities across the Northern Territory, from the Torres Strait to Alice Springs, Lee surveyed First Nations' knowledge of the virus for the Northern Territory AIDS Council."Their knowledge of HIV was that white fellas get it," Lee said.

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