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Why One British Artist Is Adding Glory Holes to a Soccer Stadium
JJ Guest has a unique approach to dealing with the homophobia in sports.
Soccer, bathtubs, and glory holes don’t seem to have anything in common, but one artist is using them to try and change the world.
In a new London exhibit, queer artist JJ Guest is using famous homoerotic images of soccer players to try and point out the sport’s well-known history of homophobia.
The exhibit, located at Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium and fittingly titled The Other Team, can only be accessed through the team’s official gift shop.
“I’m not trying to get people’s backs up,” he told The Guardian. “I want people to know that if straight men found it easier to be tactile with their friends, it would make it safer for us as well, because we wouldn’t be scrutinized for doing it. So the work is really for everyone.”
One of the pieces of art that is sure to get people talking is Glory, which depicts an iconic moment in soccer history when Geoff Hurst took the shot that propelled England to their first World Cup victory in 1966. The image is blown up and hung at “dick height,” and where the soccer ball should be is now a very precisely sized hole, according to Guest.
“That’s the standard size of glory holes in gay clubs,” he said.
Guest created this artwork to comment on how the LGBTQ+ community has always had to deal with their rights being stripped away, much like the soccer ball in the photograph.
“The GLORY series subverts memorable goals scored by the England football team,” he wrote on Instagram. “The football is cut away and removed leaving a 3.5-inch hole in the image, fetishizing a historic moment of national pride and celebration. The removal of these goals draws parallels with the erasure of queer history, and the vulnerability of queer rights, with any progress being made being immediately at risk of being taken away.”
Homophobia is sadly alive and well in soccer, and the rage Guest feels about the hypocrisy of that hate coming from a sport that seems comfortable with displays of affection between male teammates inspires his art.
Guest got angry after seeing a photo of Manchester United’s Gary Neville kissing teammate Paul Scholes on the lips after a game-winning goal. “My eyes started to stream,” he recalled. “There’s, like, seven different versions of this image, all from different angles. Two straight men are allowed to do that and I can’t hold my boyfriend’s hand in Birmingham because I’m terrified I’m going to get beat up?”’
Guest also came across images of soccer players hugging each other, bathing together, and “just walking around with their willies out,” he said.
“I remember thinking, ‘They’re so happy – why is this so upsetting to me?’ And I realized it was the absolute freedom they had from all those societal rules about how to be friends with a man, or be in love with a man, or just be around another man,” he explained. “I was confused as to how this could be celebrated when, at the same time, gay men were being beaten by police and arrested for almost the exact same activity.”
Guest’s first solo art exhibit also features a life-sized bathtub with a blown-up photo of naked members of the Everton team taking a bath together after their victory over Manchester United in 1966.
Making these works of art has helped Guest deal with some of the anger he feels. “I’ve not always been comfortable with feeling anger because angry men have always terrified me,” he said. “But in my wise old age, I’m using the anger to learn about myself – as opposed to running away from it.”
The Other Team will be at Oof Gallery until December 23, 2023.
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Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
