Martin Firrell | Public Art | Selected Works 1998-2024

Martin Firrell

British, born 1963

Martin Firrell is a British public artist long associated with the billboard and the international out-of-home industry. His works 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 directly with the public, 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'.

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selected by Barbara Ulbrist & Christiane Kunz

Nørdern contemporary, Copenhagen

Then That Other Thing Happens

1998

Flyposter
From

Untitled (Flyposters)

Black ink on silver foiled stock
594 x 841mm
Soho London March 1998

Towards the end of the 20th Century, Firrell experimented with flyposting poetic descriptions of love and loss in Soho. These are the first artworks created by the artist in the poster format, the first to occupy space more usually associated with commercial messaging, and the first works intended as public art.

The texts are influenced by the work of French novelist Marguerite Duras (1914-1996); Duras creates hallucinogenic intensity with minimal, and often repetitive, prose.

The incidents described are autobiographical. For a period of time, the artist attempted to live and relate to others in daily life with the intensity of a work of fiction by Duras.

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Glitter Ball

2001

Video on LED billboard
From

Celebrate Difference

Mp4 video colour no sound
Duration 02:32
Leicester Square London June 2001

Celebrate Difference

is the first work by the artist displayed on a commercial digital billboard; and the first of the artist's works displayed by media owner Clear Channel UK.

The screen was an early, experimental digital system installed on the outside of Home nightclub at 1 Leicester Square with an audience of c.250,000 people a day.

The screen was 4 storeys high and the technology was so primitive a man had an office inside the screen itself to ensure the lights stayed on. The little room was sweltering hot and the noise was deafening from hundreds of fans cooling the early light-emitting panels.

Artist's Journal

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Touch Me

2005

Vinyl lettering on shop window
Dimensions unknown
Charing Cross Road London July 2005

A new erotic art gallery opened above an infamous sex shop in London’s Charing Cross Road. The artist created a simple text-based scheme for the first floor window.

Vinyl lettering broadcasts the invitation, 'Touch Me Inappropriately', identifying and encouraging the taboo of illicit sexual contact in a public place.

The work was also intended to have the quality of a plea (perhaps from someone kidnapped and held hostage above the shop if your imagination is particularly fertile) asking, ‘Relieve me from my isolation, locked away high above the Charing Cross Road.’

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I Want To Live in a City Where No One Is Sent to War

2006

Digital projection
From

I Want To Live in a City Where...

Mp4 video colour no sound
Duration 04:36
National Gallery London July 2006

I Want to Live in a City Where...

presented a wish-list of liberal policies, an ambitious, artist-led agenda for civic agitation, review and renewal.

The work champions robust civil liberties: I Want to Live in a City Where... No One Can be Held without Trial; and I Want to Live in a City Where... Immigration is Regarded as a New Source of Strength.

The work calls for a city and civic life characterised by tolerance and inclusion for all, particularly for individuals or communities that might be regarded as 'other'.

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Power Is Always Temporary

2007

Digital projection
From

Six Women

Mp4 video b&w no sound
Duration 03:04
Royal Opera House London 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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Think

2008

Digital projection
From

The Question Mark Inside

Mp4 video colour no sound
St Paul's Cathedral London November 2008

The Question Mark Inside

was commissioned by Dean and Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral as the first large-scale public artwork in the cathedral's history. It marked the 300th anniversary, in 2008, of the topping-out of Sir Christopher Wren's architectural masterpiece.

The work posed the simple question, 'What makes life meaningful and purposeful?' and invited responses from the public during the anniversary year.

The resulting texts, from the domestic to the sexual to the sublime, were projected onto the exterior of the cathedral dome, the West Front at Ludgate Hill, and the interior of the Whispering Gallery.

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The Hero We've Been Sold

2009

Digital projection
From

Complete Hero

Mp4 video colour and sound
Guards' Chapel London November 2009

The media promote a one-dimensional cardboard cutout of a hero.

"Film and television are full of nightmare visions / erotic dreams in which masculinity, sex, domination and violence are conflated."

As Artist in Residence with the Household Division of the British Army, Firrell created

Complete Hero.

Text, graphics and video interviews were projected onto the 1960s modernist elevations of the Guards' Chapel with sound delivered by wireless headsets to the audience in the concourse by the West Front.

April Ashley MBE contributes her story as one of the first people in the world to have gender confirmation surgery. Ashley's courage and grace in the face of daunting odds are celebrated as acts of contemporary and complete heroism.

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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

2010

Flyposter
From

Avec Excoffon

594x420mm
Marseille France December 2010 to February 2011
Also Georgia Sherman Gallery Toronto Canada
Also Star Gallery Nagoya Japan

To mark the centenary of the birth of typographer Roger Excoffon, Galerie IFF commissioned seven artists and designers: Åbäke, Fiona Banner, Laure Provoust, Liam Gillick, Martin Firrell, Ryan Gander, and Stephane Le Mercier.

Comprendre Quelque Chose Pleinement, C'est Pouvoir N'En Rien Dire

reflects on the nature of understanding and knowledge.

What happens when understanding exceeds the expressive capabilities of language? Is the only reasonable response to complete understanding, silence?

White type appears on a uniform black field, visually ‘silencing’ anything it is flyposted over so reinforcing graphically the meaning of the artwork’s text.

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El Futuro Es Corto / The Future Is Short

2016

Portrait of Vincente Santolaria (b.1934)
From

Cómo Vivimos / How We Live

Sepia photograph of sitter with projected text
Museo Inacabado de Arte Urbano (MIAU) / The Unfinished Museum of Urban Art Fanzara Spain

Cómo Vivimos / How We Live

summarises the life wisdom of the four elders of the Spanish hill town of Fanzara: José Gascó (b.1925), Vincente Santolaria (b.1934), Pilar Castillo (b.1936) and Fina Marti (b.1940).

El Futuro Es Corto / The Future Is Short

reflects the world view of the elders nearer the end than the beginning of their lives.

The texts also appear on the wall of the school in Fanzara so that the youngest inhabitants encounter the wisdom of the eldest each day.

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Embrace Lesbianism and Overthrow the Social Order

2017

Digital billboards
From

Remember 1967

Dimensions vary
UK-wide July 2017

The 1967 Sexual Offences Act partially decriminalised sex between men but made no reference at all to lesbian sex, which had never been taken seriously (and some even doubted the possibility of it).

The invisibility of lesbianism was ended by the rise of lesbian feminism as a radical political movement in the 60s and 70s.

Radical lesbian feminists suggested there were only two ways a woman could genuinely escape male control - the first was to embrace lesbianism; the second was to overthrow the social order that automatically places men at the top of the social hierarchy.

Remember 1967

consists of six digital billboards created to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act.

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Socialism Is a Moral Idea

2019

Digital billboards
From

Union City

Dimensions vary
UK-wide July to August 2019

Based on conversations between the artist and Clare Short (Secretary of State for International Development 1997-2003), the artworks in the

Union City

series explore the moral content of socialism.

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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Protest Is Liberty's Ally

2019

Digital billboards
From

3 Billboards for Blair Peach

864 x 432px RGB jpeg
UK April 2019

April 2019 marked the 40th anniversary of the death of Blair Peach (25 March 1946 - 23 April 1979). He was injured as he took part in an anti-fascist demonstration in Southall, and died the next day in Ealing hospital.

8000 sikhs visited the Dominion cinema, Southall (now demolished) to pay their last respects to Blair Peach on the eve of his funeral.

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, for example, everyone knows a society is in trouble.

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A Flying Saucer Will Deliver an Important Message

2020

Digital billboards
From

Counter Culture Rising

Dimensions vary
UK-wide January 2020

A Flying Saucer Will Deliver an Important Message

is one of twelve artworks created by the artist in response to Trumpism, Brexit and the populist movement.

"The hippy counter culture was often associated with UFO phenomena: hippies living psychedelically tended to see all kinds of things in the sky."

The idea was prevalent in the 1950s and 60s that aliens would visit earth with dire warnings about man's reckless atomic testing or degradation of the environment. Alien wisdom would ultimately lead to a raising of human consciousness that would save the planet. Or the aliens would simply destroy humanity to protect the earth.

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Blue Contains all the Longing a Human Being Is Capable Of

2020

Digital posters
From

Die Chromatika / The Chromatika

1080 x 1920px RGB jpeg
Basel and Zurich 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.

"I love the way blue light seems to be moving away from you, and yet it is also light travelling towards you in the darkness."

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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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 ‘Andy Warhol Shot by Actress’.

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.

Beware of Boys

2021

Found video b&w with sound
From

Queering the Straight

Duration 01:06

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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Cod Wars Turned Me Gay

2022

Digital billboards
From

Pride 50

Dimensions vary
UK-wide January 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

Digital billboards
From

Pride 50

Dimensions vary
UK-wide January 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 breed of daytime 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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Reason Is a Hoax

2022

Digital posters
From

Dada 105

series
1080 x 1920px mp4 video
Basel and Zurich Switzerland June 2022

Dada 105

marked 105 years since the publication of the first Dada Review in Zurich.

Rationality, mathematics and science had all been co-opted by the First World War machine. Consequently, Dadaists considered reason itself to be discredited.

Visually, the artworks magnify flaws like tears, uneven inking and foxing from the original Dada pamphlets while the texts re-state freshly relevant aspects of Dada philosophy now that the calamity of war has returned to Europe.

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Valora La Belleza de la Justicia por Encima de Todo / Prize the Beauty of Justice Above All Else (Madrid)

2023

Digital posters
From

4 Tenets for Europe

Dimensions vary
Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom 15 September 2023

4 Tenets for Europe

appeared on billboards simultaneously across 11 European nations in 9 languages on 15th September 2023, the United Nations International Day of Democracy.

Prize the Beauty of Justice Above All Else

is the first of the 4 tenets.

"Justice is perhaps the one and only unerringly beautiful aspect of human experience. It is both the root and the fruit of democracy."

The second tenet is a paraphrasing of the great modernist novelist Virginia Woolf (1882-1941):

Look at Life Squarely and Forgive It for What It Is

The third tenet is

Disobey Any Cruel or Unjust Rule.

Disobedience - especially mass civil disobedience - can provide vital protections for any society subject to inept or wicked government and/or unethical law-making.

The fourth tenet is

Be Kind to Trees

. Trees are how we breathe! This tenet echoes the final words of the great French satirical novel

Candide:

'Cela est bien dit,' repondit Candide, 'mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.' ('That's all very well,' answered Candide, 'but we must look after our garden.')

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Women's Underwear

2024

Digital billboards and posters
From

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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Dyke

2024

Digital billboards and posters
From

All Varieties

Dimensions vary
UK-wide June to July 2024

All Varieties

celebrates the labels that help people express their individuality and define their place in the world.

The word ‘dyke’ is thought to derive from a mid 19th-century derogatory term, ‘bulldyke’, but its exact origin is uncertain. Like the word ‘queer’, ‘dyke’ has been reclaimed by the LGBT+ community.

As one proud dyke put it, 'I’m not a lesbian. I don’t strictly identify as a woman, and I’m not transgender. I’m a dyke.'

There is still some debate about whether or not 'dyke' is offensive and its use by people outside of the LGBT+ community is generally discouraged.

But it is also true to say that there is no substitute. ‘Lesbian’ is not an adequate substitute because it only describes a woman’s sexual orientation whereas ‘dyke’ also refers to her powerful masculine energy.

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Boys Kissing

2024

Digital billboards and posters
From

All Varieties

Dimensions vary
UK-wide June to July 2024

Boys Kissing

is derived from two romantic illustrations from the 1950s. In the original images the couples kissing were men and women, of course.

"I wanted to retain the immediacy and naivete of the 1950s romantic illustrations so the image editing was done quickly and simplistically."

Boys Kissing

takes the male partner from each couple and places them together in a contemporary loving embrace.

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All artworks courtesy of the artist. Copyright Martin Firrell 1996-2024. Website copyright Martin Firrell Company Ltd. Registered in England and Wales no.7337269.