Some thoughts on officialdom

I have been thinking a lot about my art. Things like what to prioritise on my very long to-do list, what formats are best for the messages I want to send and also where I want my work to sit in the wider world. These are questions that don't really involve anyone but me and require no real negotiation with other people's agendas.

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.

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.

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.

Pivo's Fattylympics posters

Oh man, the Olympics. Where do you even start when it comes to complaining? I'm not going to bother. Instead, I'm participating in the Fattylympics. It's free, it celebrates body and gender diversity, it's feminist, it's queer and hetero friendly, it's for all abilities, it's non-competitive and it's in East London this summer.

These are the first two in a series of posters I have designed for the Fattylympics. They are available for anyone to download, print and decorate to proclaim where they'd rather be in July 2012. Download them here and check out how great it's going to be while you are at it. 

Forget the stupid diet or exercise as punishment, let's have fun instead. For Londoners this summer, that may be the most subversive act possible.

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.

Lladd

There is a new version of my tribute to Margaret Kilgallen in Cardiff. Margaret often combined her interests in typography and the vernacular.

A Tale of two cities in Yorkshire: Part 2 York

The night the Health and Social Care Bill actually passed through the House of Lords, I was in York. I couldn't believe that one of the main reasons I tolerate living 4000 miles away from most of my friends and family may be permanently altered.

A tale of two cities in Yorkshire: Part 1 Shipley

A long weekend visiting friends in Yorkshire was tarnished by one of the most unforgivable crimes committed by the Coalition government so far: the passage of the nearly universally derided Health and Social Care Bill. This bill ramps up the march toward privatization, dismantling a national health care system that is the envy of people around the world.

Pivo's signature

Rather than signing my work lately, I've developed a signature stencil to put up in the general vicinity of it. The one on the left was pasted up along the Cornish coastal path west of St Ives where I put this. The one on the right is in Edinburgh near where I put this and this.

Pivo & Flax: I never will marry

Needlework, like samplers have traditionally provided girls and women with a wholesome activity (preventing the devil from influencing their idle hands) and often included bible verses or quotes about morality. A quality sampler was also seen as an indication of how marriageable the girl who stitched it was and how ordered a house she would keep.

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.

Voltairine de Cleyre

Voltairine de Cleyre was an anarchist, feminist writer and speaker who grew up in grinding poverty in rural Michigan. Among other things, she spoke out against marriage and criticised the way religion was used to suppress women's sexuality and limit their rights.

What's not to love?

I originally made this with the haters in mind. An open question about why graffiti in London gets taken down or painted over so quickly (unless you are one of a handful of mostly white male street artists who are asked to put your stuff up repeatedly in Shoreditch). 

Wonder worker

I have no issues with wearing my love of other female artists on my sleeve (or allowing them to influence my work). Hello Swoon. Hello Nikki McClure. This is my effort to send a big old loving hello to Margaret Kilgallen.

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's neice is now 21

Ever since my niece was old enough to express her first opinion, my sister has teased the two of us that we are clones. I have to admit, it's difficult to understand how else we could have a freckle in the exact same place on our palms and the back of our knees. But mostly this has been based on the amazingly close relationship we've had ever since she was born.

Pivo: the beautiful bank of ideas

There are times when things fit together and make perfect sense. Right now is one of those times. The Occupation in London has reached it's five week mark and a new space has joined the two existing sites. But this is not a camp, it's a huge, empty office building formerly owned by investment bank UBS in the heart of London. Welcome to the Bank of Ideas!

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.