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.

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.

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.

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.

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.