Romancero Books is excited to invite you to the book launch of This is a Gay Book by Pepo Moreno and Deep Sniff: A History of Poppers and Queer Futures by Adam Zmith and the Spanish edition titled Inhalación profunda. Historia del Popper y Futuros Queer.
Celebrating and reclaiming the cultural and political activism of PRIDE Month, Romancero Books is hosting a conversation with the Catalan artist Pepo Moreno and the English writer Adam Zmith.
We will talk about contemporary queer lives, the history of poppers, the power of illustration and why today Pride is still relevant and necessary.
Music by DJ Astro Jose
Talk hosted by Jorge Gárriz - Romancero Books director.
Expect readings in both English and Spanish, laughs, music and the opportunity to get your books signed by the authors.
This event will primary be in English with some reading in Spanglish.
About the authors and DJ:
Pepo Moreno was born in Spain in the last years of what we now call the Millennial Generation. He grew up drawing at his hometown in the countryside and spent his young adulthood flirting with a singer career while pursuing a BA in Communication and Advertising.
Forever an enemy of the closet and a friend to the arts, he moved to ‘poor but sexy’ Berlin, where he gained first-hand experience on how broad the spectrum of queerness could really be. It was then when his first series of drawings in between the sad, the gay and the ugly blossomed.
Today Pepo lives in Paris, and his paintings have grown to become both a mock and a celebration of gay stereotypes in Western pop culture. On the superficial –the aesthetics–, his work explores a myriad of saturated colours using different variations of acrylic painting techniques. Deep down –at heart– it embraces some of the contradictions of the modern queer life experience: from the sheer gayness of being out, proud and simply alive, to the forever young, forever beautiful obsession that often hides the loneliness and isolation of being an outcast.
Besides his personal work as an artist, Pepo also collaborates with lifestyle and fashion brands (such as Vans, Alled-Martinez or Maison-S) and has just released his first book, THIS IS A GAY BOOK (Paripé, 2022).
SHOWS:
-DIMONI, 2021, Galerie Charraudeau, Paris.
-TOT ÉS GAI, La Sala, 2021, Barcelona.
-CATIFES MARIQUES, 2021 (in collaboration with Maison-S), Galerie Charraudeau, Paris.
-ALLES IST SCHWUL, 2022, Berlin (in collaboration with Bold)
-La forme de l’Eau, 2022 (collective exhibition). Galerie Joseph, curated by Nicolas Dewarwin)
-Angels of the Wonderful World of Dissocia, 2022, Galerie Charraudeau, Paris.
(Collective exhibition).
Adam Zmith received a London Writers Award for 2019-20. He is currently working on his debut novel, Vanilla, and a collection of essays. As a promiscuous writer, Adam has published short stories, produced short films and co-written a stage show. He is also one of the hosts and producers of The Log Books, a podcast about LGBTQ+ history. Before moving into a creative practice, Adam worked as a journalist and social media editor, most recently at The Economist.
Follow him on Twitter @AdamZmith
www.adamzmith.com
Astro Jose is a London based queer DJ, Radio and Music Producer from Venezuela who likes to make people dance, smile and snog while he pushes buttons and twists nods.
About the books:
Many of us grew up in a world where nothing was gay only to soon discover that, according to some, everything has become too gay. Pepo Moreno’s acrylic on paper pieces, which with shaky stroke and saturated colors represent food, celebrities, plants, drugs, animals, saints, politicians, feelings, dictators and entities with wild eyes and smiles frozen in time, work as celebration, parody and demands of the gay agenda which corrupts the world. The gay agenda
is gay. If everything is gay, nothing is. One’s own gay existence, like the technique of these illustrations, cannot be learnt. It is dissident, amoral and free. Gay existence, much like this book, is full of strange icons, grief, errors, anarchy, fetishes, feathers, masculinity, onanism, insane desire, self-loathing, love and garbage. All that is also gay and is drawn with a childish stroke, because immaturity is gay and because actually all children are gay.
Consuming culture embodied in a physical object in the year 2022 is gay and paying for a book too see things that are available for free on Instagram is gay. But now money is gay. And Pepo Moreno too.
3, 2, 1… inhale, deep. From the Victorian infirmary and the sex clubs of the 1970s, poppers vapour has released the queer potential inside us all.
This is the intriguing story of how poppers wafted out of the lab and into gay bars, corner shops, bedrooms and porn supercuts. Blending historical research with wry observation, Adam Zmith explores the cultural forces and improbable connections behind the power of poppers.
What emerges is not just a history of pub raids, viral panics and pecs the size of dinner plates. It is a collection of fresh and provocative ideas about identity, sex, utopia, capitalism, law, freedom and the bodies that we use to experience the world.
In Deep Sniff, what starts as a thoughtful enquiry into poppers becomes a manifesto for pleasure.
Copies of the books This is a Gay Book and Deep Sniff: A History of Poppers and Queer Futures and the Spanish version will be available for purchasing after the talk and readings.
Please note we only accept card payments.
Doors open at 6.30pm and the event will begin at 7.00pm. Please have your tickets with you.
Adam and Pepo will be available to sign copies of their books afterwards.
Warm thanks to Paripé Books Press, Repeater Books, Dos Bigotes Press, to our favourite queer café in Dalston, Atlas Grinds and to our beloved graphic designer - John Philip Sage.
www.romancerobooks.co.uk
@romancerobooks
hola@romancerobooks.co.uk