ABSTRACT
Born in 1940 into a family of coal miners in Brynmawr, a small town in the south of Wales, and rising to become one of wrestling’s 1980s superstars, Adrian Street’s life and career is a project of self-staging spanning more than half a century. Featured in Jeremy Deller’s film and installation for the São Paulo Biennial, So Many Ways to Hurt You, The Life and Times of Adrian Street (2010), Street appears in his most iconic form in silver trunks, brightly coloured tights, knee-high boots, elaborate eye make-up and long bleached blonde hair.1 At the centre of the exhibit is an image of Street in full regalia standing next to his father at the mouth of the mineshaft where he once worked at a young man – where he had been mocked for his ambitions and vowed never to return when he left for London at the age of sixteen. Lips slightly pouted, he is staring into the lens of the camera with an expression of confidence and, perhaps, contempt for his surroundings. He is the flamboyant king of the ring “and queen of it too,” television’s glamour boy, the Exotic Adrian Street.2
