Description:
Philip’s panel was part of the AIDS Memorial Quilt display in Washington in October 1992, and I went with mum and the UK gang for a week. His panel came up on CNN news later that day picked out from thousands. Philip was from Bootle in Liverpool, and we started going out when I was 17 and he was 21. He was insulting, cheeky and funny, blind in one eye, five foot one with size 3 feet, but his mouth made up for his stature. I am always intrigued by people who take the mick out of me so I was hooked. We moved to London in 1978, and he worked at the post office on the King’s Road. He was diagnosed HIV+ in 1985 and with full blown AIDS in 1987. Australia was our last chance of a holiday together as he was beginning to get weaker. He loved music, especially Philadelphia soul and Helen Reddy. He loved laughing and would tell people their friends had died for a laugh - weeks later they'd bump into them on the tube...ha, he was a monkey. Him and my family got on great and he was my first proper bloke to go out with. We had a beautiful Dr in Hackney called Dr Feder. He tried all kinds to help at a time when hospital staff treated us like the plague. I used to tell people he had cancer when they asked, because it seemed mild in comparison. It all seems another life away, but it's always just under the surface because it was a massive thing for us to go through. I was 24 when he was diagnosed and it took me about five years after Philip died to feel something like me again, but I'm sure he’s fine now in Oz. He's had a quilt panel, a painting and Australia - that's your bloody lot...ha xxx
Words by Gary Sollars
'My partner Philip Munro. Died 13.1.89. Aged 34' a painting by Gary Sollars
On a hospital bed bathed in an ethereal light lies a man who has just died. Weeping by his side are two women. Another man is kneeling with his arms stretched across the mattress. Two more men, their bodies naked stride away. From the hand of one of them flutters a red ribbon, the symbol of AIDS awareness.
The painting earned Gary Sollars the overall prize for outstanding work at the Sussex Open art competition of 1996. It’s a deeply personal work which Gary saw as a final stage to the sorrow he experienced after losing Philip to AIDS after 13 years together. “The bed scene kept coming up in my head,” he said. “I wanted to do something about being gay, and the obvious subject was the loss.”
The first stage of Gary’s grieving process was to scatter Philip’s ashes over Ayers Rock in Australia. “We went on holiday to Sydney in 1987, and coming back we had to choose between seeing Disneyland or Ayers Rock. We went to Disneyland - I wanted Philip to have had the experience of being in both places.”
Gary went on to make a panel for the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt which depicts Ayers Rock with footsteps leading the way. It was exhibited alongside other local panels during Brighton Lesbian & Gay Pride in 1992. “You don’t realise it, but the bereavement process takes a long time. You’re think you’re OK for a while, and then something triggers it off again.”
Philip Munro with Gary's mum
Philip with Jason and Theresa
Philip Munro
My partner Philip Munro. Died 13.1.89. Aged 34 by Gary Sollars
Philip Munro's AIDS Memorial Quilt panel made by Gary Sollars
