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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Digital posters
1080 x 1920px, RGB colour
UK and Finland, 19 November 2025
International Men's Day celebrates men and the value they bring to the world, their families and communities.
The artwork
Barry
repurposes an image from a 1970s clothing catalogue.
By celebrating an 'ordinary' man called Barry, the artwork highlights the inherent value in all men. It's not about doing something spectacular, it's enough just to be decent.
40 archive images
9 artwork formats
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In China, one of the ten most common names for a boy is Qiang (pronounced "Chang"). The name means 'strong, powerful, energetic' (the Premier of China is also called Qiang).
Qiang is an 'ordinary' man just like Barry but from a very different culture.
The image is taken from a 1980s holiday snap: a visit to an appropriately suggestive monument celebrating strength and fortitude.
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