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

Illustration for Stir magazine

The latest issue of Stir magazine came out today on the topic of commoning in the city and features this illustration of mine. It represents my ideal urban store cupboard packed full of preserves made from food foraged or grown in community growing sites.

As a volunteer at a community orchard in a public park in Hackney, the most common question people ask when they visit is, "how are you going to stop people from taking all this stuff?" Just last weekend, I encountered a woman who asked this very question. She then explained to me that her granddaughters love rhubarb crumble and I convinced her (after much effort) to take a bunch of it so she could make their favorite treat. Even when permission is explicitly granted, it still contradicts everything we are taught about private property and getting anything for free in our current system.

This is a nod to the sense of naughtiness that so many people feel about taking what's right under their noses and how when they push through that fear, they open up a world of new possibilities.

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.

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.

Gatecrasher: Benny Rothman and the Mass Trespass

Although it's great when radical history makes it into the mainstream, it is pretty much always revised to suit a much less challenging narrative. Think of how people only ever talk about MLK Jr's "I have a dream" speech and never his support for striking garbage collectors. This has also been the case with the Mass Tresspass of Kinder Scout (which celebrates its 80th anniversary this year) and the life of activist and leader Benny Rothman.
 

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: 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.

Silver lining: other people's street art

Much of what bothers me about the street art scene is very similar to what bothers me about the riots that have just happened in my neighborhood. The dick swinging, the macho aggression, the half-assed politics and the consumerism lurking beneath it all.

When the riot started in Hackney, I hopped a fence into an off-limits construction site in East London where they are building the Olympic stadium. But I wasn't there to cause any trouble or do anything illegal. I was there to pick ripe, delicious blackberries. It's a site I often go to forage. Two weeks earlier, I picked mulberries and some dyer's chamomile for dying wool.  It was then that I spotted these lovely anonymous stencils.

Pivo: leave some for us

Excuse us, would you please leave us some:

Pivo: resources - everything (pretty much)

Unless you've been living in a cave or only have access to American network stations for news about the rest of the world, you'll know that the UK government, like many across Europe, is currently making cuts in the aftermath of the recent economic crisis. Here, the answer proposed by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition is focused on completely dismantling the British welfare state.

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.