Ante 2013 - City boys up against the wall

Caged bird Matthew Cunningham is used to defending the ethics of street photography, so it was nice not to have to worry about such matters with the shots of City workers he stuck up at Ante Art 2013.



None of us expected any different. The bankers got let off, then they got bailed out, then they got richer than ever.

Ante 2013 - Day 1

This weekend was filled with more Yorkshire loveliness than you can shake a stick at, much like last year, which you can read about here and here. The Caged Bird Club worked with Melanie Maddison to put together an exhibition celebrating the labour movement and workers' struggles as well as those of us who are anti-work and reject the divisive workers vs. shirkers rhetoric.

Anti-work banner for Ante

I'm not of the opinion that if we didn't have to work, everyone would sit in bed all day long letting the world go to shit (although it's possible we might not get up quite so early every day). All the things I do when I'm not working are much more useful and important in the wider scheme of things. Things like growing food, making things, playing music and agitating for a better, fairer world.

Remembering who we are - the event

To celebrate the last of day of the Shape and Situate exhibition at Space Station Sixty-Five, Melanie Maddison and I put together this one day extravaganza showcasing art that seeks to address lost or hidden radical history and document current social movements.

For the uncaged birds

This is a project that has been in the works for well over a year. The Caged Bird Club's intent is to reclaim space in order to make cities more beautiful and livable and that means nature needs to be one of our beneficiaries. Every part of these bird boxes is made from someone else's waste; the wood was tossed out, the paint was returned to the hardware store by unhappy consumers and the bike inner tubes holding the roofs on were punctured beyond repair.

Remembering who we are event

To download free hi-res posters, click the size you want: A4 or A3

On Saturday the 26th of January, I will be running this event with Melanie Maddison. We are celebrating the last day of the Shape and Situate: Posters of Inspirational European Women exhibition at Space Station Sixty-five with a full day jam-packed with artists and makers who combine creativity and resistance. 

In addition to every Shape and Situate poster ever made, the complete Occuprint portfolio will be on display as will a huge selection of Celebrate People's History posters. 

There will be film screenings about women of the Miner's Strike and queer youth in the 1980s as well as a series of short films by members of the Justseeds Artists Collective. 

There will be artist talks by Melanie Maddison, Edd Baldry, Peter Willis, Margarita Kern and me!

There will be a children's clubhouse designed by members of the Caged Bird Club for everyone to get creative and work on contributions to our collective zine. 

There will be space set aside for autonomous discussion, scheming and collaborating for anyone who feels inspired by what they see and hear. 

And the day will end with everyone dancing to live samba. 

For a full schedule and up to date running order, sign up to the Facebook event page. If you avoid Facebook, you can email rememberingzine@gmail.com for updates.

Leeds Zine Fair

I participated in a talk/workshop about art and social and political history along with Melanie Maddison at Leeds Zine Fair last weekend. There were lots of other things going on too. Here is my go at 'have a go' letterpress. I completely ruined the first one through over-eagerness and this one is full of fingerprints as a result of impatience. Still, I did it myself.

Workshop and zine call out

Melanie Maddison, creator of Shape and Situate and Colouring Outside the Lines zines and I are running a workshop at Leeds Zine Fair this Sunday (4th of Nov). You can read more about it here. We will also be launching a call out for contributions to a new zine. 

If you are awesome and anywhere in the vicinity of Leeds, we'll expect to see you there. If you can't make it, you can still contribute to the zine. Here are all the details.

Send your submission to rememberingzine@gmail.com by the end of March (deadline extended). Go on, fulfill that inevitable new year's resolution to do something creative in 2013.

Caged Bird Club at Ante-exhibition

We had our first indoor, non-clandestine exhibition in the beautiful Kirkgate Centre in Shipley this weekend as part of the Ante-art festival. It was such an uplifting event with so many amazing people taking part that we are going to publish a separate post about that. Our contribution was a collaborative attempt to redefine what it really means to be one of history's losers.

Sneaky peek

We've been pretty busy preparing for the Ante-exhibition this weekend but we thought we'd share some photos of our process. If you were hoping for a surprise, look away now.

This is Pivo preparing to print one of 5 (five!) brand new stencils.

Caged Bird Club coming to Ante-exhibition

Two members of the Caged Bird Club (Pivo and The No) will be participating in the Ante-exhibition in Shipley, West Yorkshire on the 5th and 6th of May. 

Ante is an awesome anarchist collective that organizes participatory events around May Day. In their own words, "Ante – or more to the point May Day – is when we collectively say to hell with shopping, with work, with debt, with worrying and with tv!  It’s a day when we remind ourselves that a life always promised for tomorrow is a life robbed of today." Find out more here.

It is said that history is written by the winners, so we are planning an interactive installation where we can collectively redefine what it means to be a loser. To kick it off, we will be putting up a skeleton timeline of inspirational losers. We want visitors to fill in the gaps with their local knowledge and personal histories and together we can produce a rich visual celebration demonstrating why it's better to fight and lose than to sit back and take the inevitable beating. 

We produced these cards to include in the Ante-exhibition program (a paper bag full of leaflets, love it!) to let people know who we are. They can be made into a spinning trompe l'oile card thingie. If you can't come to the exhibition, and you so should, you can download one to play with here.

Caged Bird Club free graphic

Fountain Pen by Sav Kyriacou
Download pdf

Woody Guthrie wrote a song called Pretty Boy Floyd about the famous American outlaw. It tells of how he got into a fight with a deputy sheriff, killed him and had to go on the run. It then depicts his generosity to the poor as a modern day Robin Hood. There was a line that always struck me relating to the bankers who drove families from their home:

You say that I'm an outlaw
You say that I'm a thief
Here's a Christmas dinner
For the families on relief.
Now as through this world I ramble
I see lots of funny men
Some will rob you with a Six gun
And some with a fountain pen.
But as through your life you travel
As through your life you roam
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.

Now, where have I heard that before?

Caged Bird Club in Edinburgh

The Caged Bird Club put up our third exhibition this weekend in Edinburgh, Scotland featuring incredible artist Rudy, aged only five. A major focus of Rudy's work is creatures of the sea, which can now be seen swimming around the streets of Leith.

More free graphics from the Caged Bird Club: 30th November.

A couple of new, free downloadable graphics to show your support for the public sector strike on Wednesday. Put them up in your windows, office, school or paste them up on the walls.

Bullseye by Lindsay Starbuck 

download pdf

I made "get the facts" prominent because the blatant lies being pumped out by the government and the media about "gold-plated" public sector pensions are pathetic. People have really bought them and, in turn, accepted the idea that there should be a race to the bottom in terms of workers' rights and benefits.

Venn diagram by Lindsay Starbuck

download pdf

 

James Venn invented these diagrams in 1880 to illustrate simple set relationships. A bit of old logic that still makes perfect sense.

If you don't work in the public sector you can still support the strike. Visit picket lines near your work. Bring picketers cups of tea to help them keep warm or go join them on your lunch break. Challenge your colleagues if they call public sector workers greedy. Remind them who is really greedy in our society (banks, corporations and our government full of millionaires).

Caged Bird Club exhibition - London 2008

The second Caged Bird Club exhibition featured photographs by Wyn Gilley of sparrows eating crumbs on a table in Berlin. You can get a better view of these amazing photographs here.

Caged Bird Club exhibition - Berlin 2008

I am finally getting around to posting about the first ever Caged Bird Club exhibition that was pasted up in Berlin way back in 2008. It featured beautiful photographs of Seattle house numbers taken by Matthew Cunningham. (He is also the photographer who provides all the photos for this blog and you can see more of his work here and here.)

Pivo: letting go

Berliners have a different attitude to graffiti than most people. My friend explained to me how the local fire station in his neighborhood has had it's entire garage door covered but there is no effort to get rid of it because the door still works so what difference does it really make? Indeed.

Damn lies download

Damn Lies by Sav Kyriacou
Download pdf

Statistics, in the form of graphs and pie charts, make up the word 'lies'.

This coalition government has been using false statistics at every turn to justify their policies. Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms are based on misleading and false evidence - lies.

The use of the futura typeface and the sparse nature of the design is a nod towards some of Peter Saville's early work on New Order record sleeves.

LifeCUTS download

LifeCUTS by Joe Stevens
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In thinking of the cuts I got to thinking of lifeguards and about saving lives.

Originally I had the word LIFE cut in half with someone falling - but felt that was too obvious. The image was taken from a photo of a lifeguard hut sign. I then decided to remove the F (showing decay, things falling apart) and had this where the falling person had been. I liked that if you take the F out of LIFE you get LIE.

This poster work is quite cryptic and vague about its meaning, which I really like.

benefit & multiply download

benefit & multiply by Lindsay Starbuck
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We are stronger when we work together.

There are insects that damage the things we want to nurture, and others that will fight our corner. If our goal is to grow some parsley from seed, the ladybirds will feed on the aphids that try to suck the seedling dry.

We should do all we can to support those who support us. This doesn't mean just tolerating them but encouraging their continued survival, even when we find some of them scary. It's the only way we can win the war against the wanton destroyers.

Clockwise from top left: ladybird/ladybug: eats mountains of aphids; hoverfly: excellent pollinator, eats aphids, thrips and decaying matter; green lacewing: eats mites and aphids; garden spider: eats moths, wasps and flies.