Martin Firrell
Public Conversations of Social Value
2026
For Lesbian Visibility Week 2026
Martin Firrell
British, born 1963
Martin Firrell is a British contemporary artist known for public artworks on billboards around the world. He uses the poster form to campaign for greater social equality. His bold and simple works address LGBTQIA+ equality, the women’s movement, feminism and gender equality; and universal human rights. The artist's aim is 'to make the world more humane'. Firrell's billboards often resemble advertising because he hijacks advertising's techniques to achieve artistic-activist ends. This co-opting of commercial techniques and his wholesale colonisation of advertising’s oldest and boldest medium - the billboard - makes Firrell one of the most apposite and significant artists of the 21st Century. ~ Dr Robert Shelton.


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Lesbian
London, 2024
In 2008, the inhabitants of the Greek island Lesbos sued to reclaim the word ‘lesbian’ for their own exclusive use.

They lost.

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Lesbians Are Out!
National Theatre, Artichoke, London 2016
In 1988, four women abseiled into the House of Lords shouting, "Lesbians Are Out!" in protest against Clause 28.

21 years later, MPs admitted the law was offensive.

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Embrace Lesbianism and Overthrow the Social Order
50th anniversary of 1967 Sexual Offences Act, UK-wide 2017
In the 1960s, radical lesbian feminists suggested there were only two ways a woman could escape male control - the first was to embrace lesbianism as a political position; the second was to overthrow the social order that automatically places men at the top of the social hierarchy.

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The One Irreducible Truth
London UK, 2005
Pioneering sexologist, Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956), interviewed thousands of men and women about their sex lives. He found the only characteristic common to all human beings is difference.

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We Live
International Transgender Day of Visibility, UK-wide 2025
Transgender people have always existed, continue to exist, and want - just like the rest of us - to live their best lives.

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Daytime TV Made Me Lesbian
50th anniversary of Gay Pride in the UK, nationwide 2022
In 1972, the first Gay Pride march took place in the UK. In the same year, new legislation allowed TV companies to broadcast in the daytime. Coincidence?
Daytime TV Made Me Lesbian
tells the true story of one young woman, beguiled by the new breed of glossy daytime TV presenters.

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Glad You Came (Helsinki Pride, Finland)
2025
Pride marches bring people together in a celebration of identity, visibility, difference, and inclusion, sometimes for the very first time.

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They/Them
UK-wide, 2024
Pronouns like ‘they/them’ and 'ze/zir', celebrated in public space, champion the visibility of non-binary LGBTQIA+ identities.

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Glad You Came (Riga Pride, Latvia)
2025
Gender non-conforming identities have been recognised for millennia by different cultures around the world.

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How To Be Popular
Re-edited found footage, 2021
In this re-edited version of a 1947 public information film, boring old Carolyn turns out to be a scandalous lesbian and the 'boy meets girl' story turns out very differently.

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Embrace Lesbianism / Reject Male Supremacy / Overthrow the Social Order / Renounce the Monster Male
50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, UK-wide 2017
These demands, made originally by activists in the 1960s, aimed at ‘eliminating the social pressures on both men and women to conform to narrowly defined gender roles’.

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Glad You Came (Gothenburg Pride, Sweden)
2025
The LGBTQIA+ community consists of many sub cultures including kink and BDSM. The fact that all are welcome is the source of the community's strength.

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Woman=Man (Stockholm, Sweden)
International Women's Day Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, UK, 2025
International Women's Day calls for equality regardless of gender. At its simplest, it calls for a world where woman = man.

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Trans Inclusive Feminism Loves You
Riga, Latvia 2025
Transgender people show us how arbitrary our gender identities really are and how we all have the right of governance over our own lives.

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Homosexuals Are Still Revolting (Girl on Girl)
50th anniversary of The Gay Liberation Front, London and Manchester 2020
A woman responds auto-erotically to her own image in the mirror. Or is she about to embrace her lesbian lover?

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wikipedia entry
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catalogue raisonné




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