Salvage Collective zine

I've written and made art about the misogyny and abuse that is rife on the left a couple of times before, like here (4th image down) and here. I've experienced gendered abuse directly and seen it happen to people I love. Most of the time fighting against it in isolation leads to burn out or disengaging entirely from the activist world. 

So I was incredibly excited when the Salvage Collective put out a call for interviews from survivors of gendered violence in activist communities for their research project. I was also super flattered that they used an image from my mini-zine in their callout and immediately offered to provide any more artwork they needed for the project. They asked me to design and illustrate the cover of their amazing report.

The images I created are based on the hope represented when spaces and structures that have been neglected are reclaimed. With nature, this is an inevitable process. Unfortunately with people, it is a battle where those who are fighting against neglect and violence encounter an absolute shit ton of opposition and further abuse. People are pretty invested in not conceding their power, unlike abandoned buildings.

If you are under the illusion that this doesn't happen amongst people who claim to care about liberation and social justice, then you really need to read this zine. It's 70 pages of mostly first hand accounts from survivors - and that's edited down from hundreds of pages of interviews. Not only does gendered violence happen with depressing frequency on the left but the responses from people who should be setting an example when it does is most often piss poor. We need pockets of resistance to demonstrate that it's possible to do better; human examples of nature winning back space from an ever expanding and destructive industrial capitalism.

This project - and this zine - is part of the process of redressing that imbalance. It is ongoing, hard work, often done by the very same people who are directly affected by gendered violence. It's time for more people to step up and support those who are working to salvage what's been ignored and left to rot.

Buy the zine in my shop or from the Salvage Collective for a mere £2 - an absolute bargain. Keep up to date with what @Project_Salvage are doing, attend one of their workshops or support them to deliver workshops where you are.

Riso prints galore

For the last couple of years, I've been involved with the wonderful Riso Print on Friday at Common House. It's given me an opportunity to play around with a risograph, work collaboratively with others and focus on art as part of my activism. Here's what I've been making.

"Work is the cause of/solution to your problems"

"Working harder, getting nowhere - start jamming!" This is the squirrel that the risograph displays when it's working.

"Let's Kick Misogyny out of the Left" Although this is self-explanatory, there is little background for this one.

"All Cats are Beautiful" Obviously!

"A little less passive consumption, a little more active participation"

"Hands off our city!"

"Don't I deserve a good home?"

From the successful campaign against the Public Space Protection Order in Hackney.

"Messy hearts made of thunder" from Mountains Made of Steam by Silver Mt. Zion

Princess Hijab: Shape and Situate #6

My submission to the latest issue of Shape and Situate: Posters of Inspirational Women in Europe. I have been in awe of the work of Princess Hijab for a while and excitedly looked for some of her work on the Metro while I was visiting Paris (sadly I didn't see any). If you are not familiar with her work, this is what it looks like and as you can see, it's not just images of women that get "hijabized":



When the latest call out for poster submissions arrived, I was right in the middle of a long-term, painful wrist injury that was stopping me from doing most things. The most upsetting thing was not being able to draw but using Princess Hijab's super fast, drippy style, I was able to draw this simple shape using my giant tagging marker, which was the only thing comfortable enough for me to hold. Creating something again helped pull me out of a worry-filled funk. I guess inspiration can mean lots of different things.

Order copies of the zine here and keep up to date about the zine by liking the Facebook page (or maybe even contribute a poster to the next issue yourself).

This is personal

Every day on my ride to work, I witness people on paid 'street art' tours around Shoreditch. The tour guides are inevitably highlighting the work of famous (white male) street artists. As a result, I've increasingly turned toward making more art directly for the people I know and love rather than sticking it up on random walls. This 40th birthday book for my partner is an example of what I mean.

Feminist graphic arts exhibtion

This Saturday, I'm participating in a group exhibition about feminist graphic artists as well as giving a talk about my art at The Feminist Library. The title of the exhibition is 'I call myself a feminist because...' and there will be a zine making workshop, talks about things like Jewish women's comics, films and food.

Remembering Who We Are zine

After our workshop at Leeds Zine Fair and our exhibition at Space Station 65, Melanie Maddison and I have collated all of the great contributions we received for our zine Remembering Who We into a brand new website. My contribution is based on an incredible woman I met many years ago but who I will never forget. 

There are already lots of contributions up on the site and more to come. And we are still open to more submissions so please find out more and contribute.

Ante 2013 - day 2

You can read all about what happened on the Saturday of Ante here. But for me, it's all about Sunday, the day that we make things and share skills. Imagine a youth club for grown ups with an emphasis on diy and the belief that anyone can and should make art. I mean, even the sign for people to clean up after themselves was a work of art.

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.

Migration project

Inspired by the exciting Migration is Beautiful campaign and in solidarity with amazing artist Favianna Rodriguez, I've started working on the tiny seedling of a campaign about migrant rights here in the UK/Europe. 

In the Americas, they have chosen the monarch butterfly as a symbol of both natural migration and beauty. Here, I am using the barn swallow in a similar way.

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.

Helen Brook poster - Shape and Situate

I developed this poster about Helen Brook for the latest issue of the wonderful zine Shape and Situate: Posters of Inspirational European Women. If you're not sure who Helen Brook is, I'm not surprised as there is a complete dearth of information about her on the internet. This is despite being one of the founders of sexual health services for young people in the UK. The main young people's clinic still in existence is even named after her. 

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.

Making noise and dressing up

I do more than just sit around in my pajamas drawing pictures all day. Like playing in a protest Samba band, for instance. We recently played at the Summer Wildlife Carnival at the Waterworks Nature Reserve in Lea Valley Park to show our support for British wildlife and wild spaces in cities. I made paper masks for each band member to wear. Here they are from low to high on the food chain.

Animal: wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus)
Diet: seeds
Instrument: tamb

Occuprint portfolio

Although I've had this in my possession for a while now, I felt the need to express my gratitude for having my work included in such a great project. And not to mention, explain what a privilege it is to be the owner of such a beautiful artifact. 

Ante-art awesomeness

Imagine your local community centre, thanks to its manager's admiration for the Situationists, was taken over by all the weirdos, punks and hippies from the surrounding area for an entire weekend to display art, play music, eat food, drink cocktails and generally making a huge mess to celebrate International Workers' Day. Well, that's pretty much Ante-Art which took place at Shipley's Kirkgate Centre last weekend.

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.