Een Blauwlipmossel Opent Zich En Onthult Een Paard / A Blue-lipped Mussel Opens to Reveal a Horse, Antwerp & Brussels, Belgium
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.
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 & Brussels, Belgium
2024
Goll believed a profound understanding of reality's inner structure would lead to a higher or sur-reality.
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.
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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
This text 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."
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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
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 out bisexual person to become CEO at Lloyd’s, the world’s oldest insurance market.
"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
French feminism of the 1970s 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.
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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 glossy female TV presenters, so becoming aware of their LGBT+ identity for the first time.
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Civil Servant Made Me Queer
2022
Quentin Crisp was well on his way to becoming (in)famous when the first Gay Pride march took place in the UK in July 1972.
Many young people first encountered the possibility of living a queer life through Crisp's autobiography
The Naked Civil Servant
and John Hurt's extraordinary portrayal of Crisp in the TV adaptation of the same title.
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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, 'Not for nothing are our officers called 'our boys in blue jeans'. 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.
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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 & 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 & Zürich Switzerland
2022
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.'
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