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Martin Firrell
Selected Works
2007-2024
Self Portrait (on Fire Island),
2021
Martin Firrell
British, born 1963
Martin Firrell is a British public artist long associated with the billboard and the international out-of-home media industry. He uses the billboard form to challenge unjust power systems of all kinds, including patriarchal power, the oppression of women and non-heterosexuals, and the heteronormative status quo. He uses language to engage publics around the world, provoking dialogue about more equitable social organisation. The artist's aim is 'to make the world more humane'. His work has been summarised as 'art as debate'.
is a series of 16 billboard artworks celebrating the labels that help people express their individuality and define their place in the world.
A label can be a box, a prison, a way of controlling how people are regarded. Or it can be a liberation, allowing you to tell the world exactly who you really are.
Showcasing labels like ‘queer’, ‘lesbian', 'straight', ‘gender non-conforming’, 'ze/zir', ‘cisgender’, 'pan-sexual', 'non-binary', 'trans', 'femme', 'they/them', 'bi', 'gay' and 'dyke' across the UK,
All Varieties
sends world-leading LGBT+ equality messages to the international community.
Novērtē Taisnīguma Skaistumu Vairāk Par Visu / Prize the Beauty of Justice Above all Else, Riga Latvia
2023
Digital billboards and posters
From the series
4 Tenets for Europe
Dimensions, various
Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, UK, 15 September 2023
4 Tenets for Europe
appeared on billboards simultaneously across 11 European nations in 9 languages on 15th September 2023 to mark the United Nations International Day of Democracy.
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Appréciez avant tout la beauté de la justice / Prize the Beauty of Justice Above all Else, Aix-en-Provence France
2023
The qualitative aspect of justice ('justice' in the sense of 'fairness') is the subject of
Appréciez avant tout la beauté de la justice.
The artwork suggests that fairness is the one and only unerringly beautiful aspect of human experience. Justice is both the root and the fruit of democracy.
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Paraugies Dzīvei Acīs Un Piedod Tai / Look at Life Squarely and Forgive It for What It Is, Riga Latvia
2023
Look at Life Squarely and Forgive It for What It Is
is a paraphrasing of the great modernist novelist Virginia Woolf (1882-1941).
The artist shares Woolf's view that life is something to be lived up to, seen for what it is without illusions, and forgiven for all its faults.
It is only by confronting and grasping the essential truths of life that one is able to live it fully.
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Embrace Lesbianism, Reject Male Supremacy, Overthrow the Social Order, Renounce the Monster Male, London UK
2017
Six digital billboards
From
Remember 1967
1600 x 400px RGB jpeg as b&w
UK-wide, June to July 2017
To mark the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which partially decriminalised homosexuality in England and Wales,
Remember 1967
re-states demands made by feminists and gay liberationists in the 1960s that still warrant attention fifty years on.
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Embrace Lesbianism and Overthrow the Social Order
2017
Digital billboards
From
Remember 1967
Dimensions, various
UK-wide, June to July 2017
Radical Lesbian feminists of the 60s and 70s suggested there was only one way for a woman to escape male control - embrace lesbianism as a political rather than a personal act.
In doing so, women would undermine the structures that automatically placed men at the top of the social hierarchy.
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Think, St Paul's Cathedral, London UK
2008
Digital projections to the South Dome, St Paul's Cathedral
From
The Question Mark Inside
8-15 November 2008
The Question Mark Inside
asked theologians, scientists, artists, atheists, and the general public, 'What makes your life meaningful?'
Wildly diverse answers, from the domestic to the sexual to the sublime, were projected onto the Dome, West Front and Whispering Gallery to mark the 300th anniversary of St Paul's Cathedral.
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Sun (Arabic), St Paul's Cathedral
2008
The inclusion of Arabic text was intended to be political and conciliatory at a time of armed conflict in the Middle East.
The Arabic script for sun evokes humanity's shared fortune - we all live under, and depend on, the same sun regardless of differences in language, culture or belief.
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I Don't Understand Why There Is War, Whispering Gallery, St Paul's Cathedral
2008
Digital projections to the Whispering Gallery, St Paul's Cathedral
From
The Question Mark Inside
8-15 November 2008
All too often, individual lives are shaped by events beyond the control of ordinary people. This text, contributed by a member of the public, eloquently expresses feelings of powerlessness and perpexity.
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Comprendre quelque chose pleinement, c'est pouvoir n'en rien dire / To Understand a Thing Fully Is To Be Able To Say Nothing About It, Marseille France
2010
Flyposter
Black ink on standard flyposter stock
594 x 420mm
Marseille France, December 2010 to February 2011
Comprendre Quelque Chose Pleinement
was commissioned to mark the centenary of the birth of typographer Roger Excoffon (1910 - 1983).
Excoffon was one of Marseille's most distinguished citizens, typographer, graphic designer, and creator of the livery for Air France.
Comprendre Quelque Chose Pleinement
reflects on the nature of understanding - what happens when understanding exceeds the expressive capabilities of language? Is the only reasonable response to complete understanding, silence?
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Protest Is Liberty's Ally, London UK
2019
Digital billboards
From the series
Union City
Dimensions, various
UK-wide, July to August 2019
Protest Is Liberty's Ally,
asserts the importance of demonstrations of solidarity.
Vibrantly expressed dissent can be regarded as a measure of a society's health.
When protests are crushed or disallowed, everyone knows a society is in trouble.
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Socialism Is A Moral Idea (with Clare Short)
2019
The text of this artwork originates from a conversation between the artist and Clare Short, Secretary of State for International Development, 1997-2003.
According to Clare Short, it is a mistake to link the moral content of socialism to any one system of social or economic organisation.
Quoting the former Russian President Gorbachev, she says: 'Peasants have always taken tomatoes to market' meaning markets are not all evil but distorted power and great inequality are.
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Power Is Always Temporary, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
2007
Digital projection
From
Six Women
Mp4 video b&w no sound
Duration 03:04
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, July 2007
For the first time in the history of the Royal Opera House, public art texts were projected onto the main curtain as introductions to each of the three acts of the opera Tosca.
Power Is Always Temporary
explores the experiences of passion, sexual desire, jealousy, infidelity and violence in the lives of Ivy, Jeanne, Mary, Leonie, Rita and Isabelle, six women aged between 60 and 84.
Discussing their life experiences candidly reveals truths pertinent to the themes of Tosca, particularly the misuse of power in relation to men's sexual impulses to control women.
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You Can't Shower Because They'll Find You Nude
2007
You Can't Shower Because They'll Find You Nude
describes the disruption of domestic life experienced by one woman during a coup in Latin America.
In any military conflict, women and children are particularly at risk.
You Can't Shower Because They'll Find You Nude
refers to the continual threat of discovery, violence and uninvited sexual attention.
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Blau Trägt All Die Sehnsucht, Zu Der Ein Mensch Fähig ist, in sich / Blue Contains All the Longing a Human Being Is Capable Of, Zürich Switzerland
2020
Digital posters
From
Die Chromatika / The Chromatika
1080 x 1920px RGB jpeg
Basel and Zürich, Switzerland, September 2020
Die Chromatika
is a new psychological theory of colour created by the artist in response to Goethe's
Zur Farbenlehre/Theory of Colours
and Rudolf Steiner's writings on colour.
Rudolf Steiner observed that blue gives the impression of retreating away from us and this makes us want to move towards it, to follow it, to reach out for it.
In the artist's own words, "I felt that if you had the perfect blue, it would be a perfect expression of longing. It would contain all the longing a human being could ever feel."
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Schwarz Ist Die Schwerkraft, Die Diese Strahlende Welt Zusammenhält / Black Is the Gravity that Tethers the Luminous World, Zürich Switzerland
2021
Die Chromatika
provides an absolute psychological definition of each of the spectral colours. This is a caprice of course, a chromatic joke, made all the more compelling by the use of German and its presumed precision as the language of science.
The artist writes, "I equate black with the intense gravity of a singularity or black hole. I see it as a profound point of truth in the uncertain immensity of the universe.
"Without black/gravity/ darkness, there would be nothing to anchor our light-filled, coloured world.
In black's absence, what would prevent the visible world from careening off into oblivion?
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Beware of Boys
2021
Re-edited found video, b&w, sound
From the Prelinger Archive
Duration 01:06
UK, 11 May 2021
Anti LGBT+ propaganda of the 1960s often presented homosexuality as a mental illness. It was also not unusual for homosexuality to be conflated with sadism and paedophilia.
Found footage, titled
Boys Beware,
is re-edited so it is the young hitchhiker who is predatory, taking advantage of a wholly reasonable and friendly older driver.
This role reversal allows
Beware of Boys
to lampoon the idea that homosexuality is a mental illness and a danger.
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Een Blauwlipmossel Opent Zich En Onthult Een Paard / A Blue-lipped Mussel Opens to Reveal a Horse, Antwerp and Brussels, Belgium
2024
Digital posters
From
100 Years of surrealism
1080 x 1920px mp4 video, colour no sound as b&w
Belgium, October 2024
On 15th October 1924, André Breton (1896-1966) published his now-famous
Manifeste du surréalisme.
Less widely known is Yvan Goll’s (1891-1950) manifesto of surrealism, the movement’s very first document, published 14 days earlier on 1st October 1924.
Yvan Goll's surrealism was less fanciful than Breton’s, rooted in the fundamental nature of reality, rather than the world of dreams and chance.
Een blauwlipmossel opent zich en onthult een paard / Une moule à lèvres bleues s'ouvre et révèle un cheval (A Blue-Lipped Mussel Opens and Reveals a Horse)
is neither random nor fanciful but based on the similarity in shape between a mussel shell and a horse's skull.
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Tout ce que je ne sais pas est inimaginable, existant dans un lieu inimaginable / Everything I Don't Know Is Unimaginable, Existing in an Unimaginable Place, Antwerp and Brussels, Belgium
2024
Goll's surrealism was based on the belief that a profound understanding of reality's inner structure would lead to a higher or sur-reality.
Tout ce que je ne sais pas est inimaginable, existant dans un lieu inimaginable (Everything I Don't Know Is Unimaginable, Existing in an Unimaginable Place)
expresses the Gollian-surrealist truth that what we do not know, we cannot imagine.
And what we cannot imagine exists in a place, which is itself beyond imagination. This seems a self-evident and specifically Gollian example of surrealism.
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All Men Are Dangerous
2019
Digital billboards
From the series
Power and Gender (Men)
Dimensions, various
UK-wide, January to March 2019
The text
All Men Are Dangerous
first appeared in a projection by the artist at Tate Britain in 2006. At the time, there was armed conflict in Iraq and questions were being asked about the legality of the war.
"Men appeared to be inherently dangerous, and to hold the majority of power in the world, and it seemed this was the real issue in play."
The 'dangerousness' referred to might also be subtle and diffuse like the risk-taking that caused the financial crisis in 2008 or the growing impact of climate change.
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When Men Hold Power They Abuse It (with Annie Rickard)
2019
Digital billboards
From
Power and Gender (Women)
Dimensions, various
UK-wide, January to March 2019
Annie Rickard, former global president of media company Posterscope, suggests that men tend to gain power quicker in patriarchal systems and with less effort than women.
Women usually have to work harder and wait longer than men to achieve positions of authority.
When power is gained more slowly, the risks of abuse are fewer; power tends to be used more responsibly and thoughtfully when it is harder won.
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Ugly Sweaty Men Become CEOs All the Time. Ugly Sweaty Women Don't (with Dame Inga Beale)
2019
Dame Inga Beale is the first woman and the first openly bisexual person to become CEO at Lloyd’s, the world’s oldest insurance market.
Ugly Sweaty Men Become CEOs All the Time. Ugly Sweaty Women Don't
highlights the double standards that still apply to men and women in business.
"Men are judged by what they can do. Women are still judged first by the way they look."
The fact that women have attained positions of power simply means they had the tenacity to overcome these inequalities - the inequalities themselves still persist.
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What Oppresses Us Shapes Our Desires, London UK
2022
Digital and paper posters
Dimensions, various
19 July to 15 August 2022
UK-wide
What Oppresses Us Shapes Our Desires
quotes French feminist theory of the 1970s.
French feminism theorised that any oppressor has the power to shape all of the responses of the oppressed, including what the oppressed come to regard as erotic or desirable.
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Britain's First Astronaut Preferred Women's Underwear
2024
Digital billboards and posters
Commissioned by Alight Media
From the series
Astronaut
864 x 432px and 1080 x 1920px RGB jpegs
UK-wide March 2024
In 1991, the first British astronaut flew into space and orbited the earth for 8 days aboard the Mir space station. And she was a woman.
Helen Sharman, a 27-year-old from Sheffield, made British 'herstory'.
Women's Underwear
emphasises the gender of Britain's first astronaut with the intention of promoting equality of opportunity for all British people.
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Actress Shoots Andy Warhol / Valerie Solanas Shoots Artist
2021
Manipulated newsprint
UK, June 2021
When radical feminist theorist Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol on 3 June 1968, the newspaper headline read ‘Actress Shoots Andy Warhol’.
The reporting was lazy and fitted a pre-existing perception that Warhol was surrounded by crazy ‘art people’ and unbalanced ‘superstars’.
Though Solanas was abused, dismissed or ignored throughout her life, history has since recognised her as one of the most important radical feminist theorists of the 20th Century.
Here the artist revises and corrects the historical news story, according Solanas the respect of referring to her by name and describing her target anonymously, but accurately, as
an artist.
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Cod Wars Turned Me Gay, London UK
2022
Digital billboards
From the series
Pride 50
Dimensions, various
UK-wide, 17 January to 6 February 2022
'Cod Wars' broke out between Iceland and the UK in 1972 - the same year the UK's first Gay Pride march took place.
Cod Wars Turned Me Gay
tells the true-life story of one teenager's realisation of their gay identity, triggered by scenes on TV of burly trawlermen in conflict over fishing rights.
At the same time, the artwork deliberately satirises the ludicrous view, prevalent in the early 1970s, that people could 'catch' or 'be turned' LGBT+.
Cod Wars Turned Me Gay
is one of nine artworks made to mark the 50th anniversary of the first Gay Pride march in the UK.
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Daytime TV Made Me Lesbian
2022
New legislation, allowing TV companies to broadcast during the day, was passed in 1972 - the same year the first Gay Pride march took place in the UK.
Many young women were inspired and beguiled by a new generation of female TV presenters, so becoming aware of their LGBT+ identity for the first time.
Daytime TV Made Me Lesbian
tells the true-life story of one teenager's realisation of her lesbian identity while watching the glossy presenters of the UK's first daytime TV shows.
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1970s: Police Harassment
2022
Digital billboards
From the series
Five Decades of Pride
Dimensions, Various
UK-wide, July 2022
Five Decades of Pride
was created to commemorate on 1 July 2022 the 50th anniversary of the first Gay Pride march in the UK.
LGBT+ people were invited to nominate the most signficant issues facing them in the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, the 2000s and the 2010s.
In the 1970s, 'pretty policemen' in 'plain clothes' (usually a white t-shirt and tight jeans) would approach gay men to lure them into breaking the law.
Alfred Dubs, Labour MP for Battersea, told Parliament, 'Police officers are acting as
agents provocateurs.
If a policeman had not been present, there would have been no offence.'
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1980s: AIDS & Section 28
2022
On 12 December 1981, The Lancet reported the first AIDS death in the UK.
The tabloid press labelled HIV the ‘gay plague’, making it easier for the Conservative government to pass the shameful Section 28 into law.
By criminalising the ‘promotion of homosexuality’, Section 28 shut down conversations about sexuality in schools and removed support from young and often vulnerable LGBT+ people who deserved better.
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2010s: Transphobia
2022
The 2010s were characterised by growing transphobia, and viscious hate speech, particularly on social media. It still seems difficult for society to discuss questions of gender in a reasoned and balanced way.
Even in the 2020s, a third of all LGBT+ people have been victims of homophobic, biphobic or transphobic hate crimes.
The battle for LGBT+ equality will only be won when all residual elements of discrimination against trans people have been swept away and LGBT+ people as a whole have fully equal laws and fully equal dignity, respect and rights.
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Three Men, Naked (Homosexuals Are Still Revolting), London UK
2020
Large format digital posters
1600 x 400px jpeg, RGB colour
Cromwell Road, London UK, October 2020
To mark the 50th anniversary of founding of the Gay Liberation Front in the UK, a composite artwork of naked masculinity was displayed across six consecutive large format billboards on a major arterial route into London UK.
Whilst the nude has a long and honourable tradition in the Fine Arts, nudity is usually prohibited on commercial billboards in the UK.
In recognition of the significance of the anniversary, Clear Channel waived the customary prohibition and displayed the work without modifications of any kind.
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Art Is Our Protest Against This Reality, Basel and Zürich Switzerland
2022
Digital posters
From
Dada 105
1080 x 1920px mp4 video, RGB colour, no sound
Duration 0:15
Basel & Zürich, Switzerland, June 2022
Dada 105
marks 105 years since the publication of the first Dada Review in Zürich.
The artworks magnify flaws like tears, uneven inking and foxing in the original Dada pamphlets while the texts re-state aspects of Dada philosophy pertinent to our times.
Art Is Our Protest Against This reality
points to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Once again war has come to Europe so art must protest against all and any conditions that lead to war.
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Reason Is a Hoax, Basel and Zürich Switzerland
2022
Dadaists believed society's historical reasoning was delusional, and that the natural world, of which man was a small part, was governed by both logic and chaos.
Reason, mathematics and science had all been co-opted by the war machine of the First World War to create mass suffering and death.
As Jean Arp put it, 'Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man and recover the natural and unreasonable order.'
Reason Is a Hoax
discredits the entire Age of Enlightenment, calling into question the value of rational thought
