Final Shape and Situate poster: Caroline Leneghan

This is my poster for the very last issue of Shape and Situate: Posters of Inspirational Women in Europe, the fantastic zine curated by Melanie Maddison for many years. I'm going to miss this zine. Ever since I started contributing, I've read books about radical history and thought about women in my community a little bit differently - basically with 'maybe that would make a good S&S poster' permanently in the back of my mind. So I thought I should end it all with a bang.

As a result of personal experiences, I've been thinking a lot about abusive men on the left for a while now, specifically how piss poorly the left deals with these men. At the same time, there has been an increasing backlash against marginalised people speaking out and challenging historical and current abuses of power. 

Caroline Leneghan's situation isn't unusual in the sense that 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence in their lifetimes. But her abuser is a high-profile leader in one of the most powerful trade unions in the UK - a bastion of militant and radical workplace activism. Apparently what unites small, horizontally organised groups of activists and big, hierarchical trade unions who ascribe to very different ideologies is their shared failure to listen to, believe or support those who experience abuse in their ranks*.

But this is nothing new and everyone who speaks out knows very well that it could happen to them if they do. Choosing to do it anyway is my personal definition of inspirational and why I've profiled Caroline for my last poster. It is also a gigantic middle finger aimed at not only abusers but at those so-called lefties who cover up abuse, make excuses for abusers or stay silent by claiming it's 'none of their business'.

Read Caroline's story in her own words (content warning: images of the effects of physical abuse) and get yourself a copy of the last ever Shape and Situate. 

*There are some good examples from the left, like the stance Clapton Ultras took against Steve Hedley/in support of Caroline last year.

January comic

A free minicomic to help you prepare for 2014. 

 To see the rest, download the full comic as a pdf (3MB) here. 

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.

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.

On fabric, in the woods

It would be understandable if you assumed I had given up putting my work on the streets in exchange for a cushty life of legitimate indoor exhibitions and poster making. But that doesn't mean that assumption is right. All this time, I've been cooking up something new and this is what it looks like.

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. 

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.

Pivo's neice in Edinburgh

Pivo's neice, featured earlier here, took a trip last summer to Scotland. On the day she visited Edinburgh (while a heatwave hit the rest of the UK) it rained and it rained and it was cold and it was miserable.

Forward

On any given day in London, I see several small grumpy children being dragged along while their parents run errands. I always try to give the little ones empathetic smiles. When they are actually crying, I stick my bottom lip out at them (in an I-can-feel-your-pain solidarity kind of way). If they are not confused as hell, they sometimes smile.

grounded

I saw this fellow on the train a few weeks back. He was holding his bible, looking quite fretful about what he was reading. I'm guessing he was wrestling with some seriously big questions. 

Over the past week, I've spent many hours on trains and been subjected to so many hideously boring conversations about shopping. I wanted to give some recognition to this guy for publicly thinking about something bigger than himself and his stuff. 

Seasons greetings from Pivo

See the red and green in there? That's as festive as I'm willing to get. Before any Scrooge accusations get thrown around though, this isn't just about a dislike of Christmas. I put a much larger version of this up on the 15th of December for Occupy Everywhere day (with five kids in a pyramid formation, the bottom row saying 'Occupy the walls').

Pivo: dig deep

Earlier this month, my city and my neighborhood in particular got a little bit scary. Immediately, the right-wing was hardened and those in power have begun the backlash. The British public was outraged by what they were witnessing and so the politicians decided they would respond to their calls for blood and ruthlessness first with talk of water cannon and curfews and now with disproportionately harsh sentencing.

Pivo across America - Brooklyn

Everyone needs a first time to completely lose their street art before they can even take a photograph of it. Mine ironically happened in a Brooklyn neighborhood that was absolutely covered in graffiti. The only thing left in the morning was the text (share what you don't need).

It could have been taken down by the pounding rain and high winds that lasted through the night or the owner of the building could have ripped it down before it dried. Whatever happened, I think the message works on it's own.

Pivo across America - Cleveland

Cleveland, for those of you who don't know, is a city in the Midwest. More accurately, it is a city in the Rustbelt, a swathe of the country that used to manufacture nearly everything the US consumed. The US (and most of the developed world) now consumes mostly stuff manufactured in other parts of the world. This means that lots of people haven't had jobs for a long time and many cities and people have been left to fend for themselves. 

Pivo across America - Grand Haven

I didn't know that there was going to be a local art competition when I went to Grand Haven, Michigan to see my parents but it ended up being the perfect opportunity to paste up some street art in a town that rarely sees (or at least keeps) any graffiti. To try to ensure this didn't get taken down prematurely, I even faked an entry form by cutting out the logo for the Grand Haven Artwalk from their brochure and pasting it up next to my 'entry' (it's the little blue square on the left). 

Pivo across America - Seattle

In Seattle, I spent the day with my 92-year-old grandma walking around her neighborhood, visiting her farmer's market and looking at the amazing P-patches. 

Pivo: resources - homeland

The French town of Collioure is renowned for attracting artists. Matisse, Dali and Picasso spent time there, and it is now a place where people go to buy work by living painters and sculptors. But I was interested in examining another part of Collioure's history in my street art. 

Pivo: resources - water

 
The first part in a series looking at how we use, share, waste and own (some of us) the resources that everyone needs to survive.

Pivo - Illustrating the walls

It's been a long time but hopefully worth the wait. Introducing Pivo the street artist and her project to help the people of London rediscover the lost art of empathy. There's something really exciting about making one off work and handing it over to the world. These photographs will be the only evidence that this painting ever existed in a few weeks.