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.
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.
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.
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.
I've often felt confused by the annoyance or outright contempt that so many working people express towards health and safety legislation. You don't hear the same tone when people talk about the 35-hour working week or overtime pay or the statutory right to paid holidays but it all comes from the same fight for workers' rights. But I guess not everyone has a friend like Mark who enthuses about H&S in the context of Anarcho-syndicalism.
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.
In addition to animation, I recently tried my hand at embroidery for the first time. I decided to make a tapestry to celebrate my lovely friends Nicole and Jon getting married and extending their family.
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.
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.
When I first learned to use Illustrator, I thought I would never do anything by hand again. Now that I've started doing everything by hand again (especially fonts), I'm wondering why I ever stopped in the first place. Painting with a good brush is so damn satisfying!
This week, I decided to break the word 'prepare' down to one small phonetic part and see where it visually and logically went, sort of like six degrees of separation. An example sentence to clarify my logic: I used my entire Sunday to prepare a piece for Illustration Friday, which meant I had to ignore the fact that my taxes are due in less than two weeks.
BTW - 'knor' is an old English word for a bump or growth on a tree and is most likely where words like knot and knobbly come from.
