Andrew Heard's provocative post-pop art is ripe for rediscovery

This week, the fascinating post-pop paintings of Andrew Heard will be exhibited in the UK for the first time in over 30 years. In the 1980s and early 1990s the Hertford-born artist was a well-regarded figure whose work sold especially well in continental Europe. He shared a Shoreditch studio with David Robilliard, an equally revered artist and poet who also had an impish iconoclasm, and was often perceived as a protégé of Gilbert & George. 'Andrew and his pictures were very happy and very sad; very nostalgic but also up-to-date; aggressive and gentle; simplistic and complex, lifefull and deathfull [sic],' the duo writes in the new exhibition's catalogue.

Heard's work juxtaposing sly social commentary with retro English imagery – caddish character actor Terry-Thomas, the kitsch Carry On films – has dropped out of the cultural conversation since he died in 1993. But in his lifetime, before he was claimed by AIDS at the tender age of 34, he was a skilled curator of his own image. He said he adopted his provocative skinhead look, complete with a tattoo of the Union Jack and a dragon on his left bicep, because he didn't want to resemble other artists

Art historian Dominic Johnson, who has curated the new exhibition at Amanda Wilkinson Gallery in London, believes Heard's work has been marginalised because he doesn't slot neatly into the Young British Artists (YBA) movement. 'And I think that's partly a result of institutional laziness,' Johnson tells Wallpaper*. 'Andrew's work doesn't appear in any of the national collections in this country, so he doesn't seem to get included in major exhibitions of art from this period, even though he really should be.'

Certainly, Heard's bold, brilliant paintings reveal a lot about the tensions and complexities of life in late 20th-century Britain. Commenting on the upcoming exhibition, Frankie Goes to Hollywood singer Holly Johnson observes that 'Andrew's work was unique and so English when everyone else seemed to be inspired by the great American artists Haring and Basquiat". I Want to Be Good, the 1992 painting that gives the exhibition its title, shows a familiar bastion of traditional suburban values, the married couple from the Oxo TV adverts, preparing a cake topped with a beefcake male pinup. Beneath the main painting is a strip of images in which Spencer Tracy transforms from benevolent Dr Jekyll to maniacal Dr Hyde in a 1941 Hollywood movie.

As Johnson notes in the exhibition's catalogue, this was an in-joke alluding to rumours that Tracy may have been a closeted gay man. 'This was the last painting that Andrew ever made – it was on the easel when he died,' gallery owner Amanda Wilkinson tells Wallpaper*. 'For this reason, it's so interesting to interpret it as his final gesture. He's showing us this totally idealised family looking gleefully or even lovingly at a kind of eruption of homosexuality from the cake.'

Another painting from the exhibition, 1987's You Are Wretched You Are Scum, superimposes two anguished-looking topless men over a busy but impersonal city road. Written in block capitals, Heard's text reads: 'You are wretched. You are scum. Yes I'm talking to myself.' Is this his response to the vilification of queer men during the HIV/AIDS epidemic? Or a broader comment on urban isolation during the 1980s, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously claimed that 'there is no such thing as society'. Either way, it's a prime example of Heard's powerful late period. 'Andrew, his partner Chris Hall and David Robilliard were all diagnosed with HIV in 1987, and Robilliard died within a year of being observed. Andrew's work definitely gets darker and more focused on 'the end coming' after that,' Johnson observes.

Though the whereabouts of some Heard paintings are unknown, many have been preserved by Hall, who still runs his late partner's estate. Johnson and Wilkinson hope that their bespoke showing of six key pieces, plus an accompanying talk at the Tate Modern on 12 June, will lead to a larger exhibition of Heard's work and a reassessment of his legacy. 'What I really want is for people to be shocked that they don't know his work, and to realise that there's a gap in their sense of what British art looked like in the 1980s and 1990s,' Johnson says. 'I really do think people are going to be blown away when they see Andrew's paintings.'

'Andrew Heard: I Want To Be Good' is at Amanda Wilkinson Gallery from 28 May to 8 August. 'Andrew Heard: Painting, Memory, History' takes place at Tate Modern on 12 June