Resident writer Michaela Hall focuses on the

#metoo movement in her piece -

the movement in motion

In 2006, social activist Tarana Burke had a conversation with a thirteen-year-old girl, who confided in her that she had been sexually assaulted. Burke later remarked that she regrets not saying ‘me too’ and as a result of this, the Me-Too movement was born. This was catapulted into the public eye following the exposure of the Hollywood figure, Harvey Weinstein as a serial culprit of sexual abuse. This movement had the aim of exposing the vast extent of the problem of sexual assault among women globally and those who had experienced this were encouraged to share the hashtag #MeToo on social media. This made visible the unspoken and demonstrated the power of activism emerging through social media platforms; bringing people together in empathy, understanding, and action against an injustice that is often ignored.

So how did artists respond to this? They made the unspoken visual and confronted audiences with representations that could not be ignored, exposing the realities of sexual assault.

American based artist, Claire Salvo, was inspired by her own assault and decided enough was enough, these women needed to be represented. As a result, Salvo created the ‘ME: WE’ series (2018) consisting of hand-drawn portraits of nine survivors of sexual assault. Not only do the portraits focus solely on the facial features of the women, portraying the intense emotion of the survivors, but their stories of assault also accompany the portraits. This confrontational and voyeuristic window into these experiences shows the importance of the arts in exposing the audience to uncomfortable topics that re-enforce the aims of social activism in the twenty-first century.

The Me-Too movement has continued to impact artist’s work with the aim of raising awareness and fighting for women’s rights since 2006. As part of her 2018 show ‘Will, She Ever Shut Up?’ American artist Betty Tompkins defaced versions of famous works by classical Baroque and Renaissance artists such as Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi with overlayed thick pink and white text that completely overpowers the composition. These pieces of text are made up of statements from men’s apologies in response to the Me-Too movement that is unsatisfactory and underwhelming. With Tompkins shining the spotlight on these apologies in such an aggressive way, she aims to expose not only the unjust nature of these words but the gender imbalance in the subjects of these famous works. Tompkins will not be silenced and carries on the call for action from the me-too movement in these works.

What both artists demonstrate here is not only that the arts are highly reactive to social activism, but that they are a key element of its longevity. The arts open a secondary global platform that goes hand in hand with the social media origins of this movement in confronting the uncomfortable and unspoken. The ability of artists to visualise something which is inexpressible is something that is essential to an issue such as sexual assault. Regardless of the audience, location, and reputation, what all artists can really do for activism is to help put a movement in motion, refusing to be ignored.

Artivism

by Deborah Davies

BIO

DD investigates social and political issues, seeking to unearth truths around challenging subject matter. Holding the belief that all humans are connected and all personal actions affect the greater community her work seeks to show how the actions of one can affect outcomes for others. This naturally leads to research into the imbalances of power within society, be it around the many pockets of inequality, including; gender, social class, age, race.

INSTAGRAM: @deborahdaviesart website: www.deborahdavies.art

“What was in fact blown up…..was the social contract, the paradigm that says you can live comfortably without getting your hands dirty with politics. The belief that it only takes your one vote every four years (or no vote at all: you’re above politics) to have your freedoms protected. This belief was torn to pieces. The belief that institutions are here to protect us and take care of us, and we don’t need to bother ourselves with protecting these institutions from being eroded by corruption, lobbyists, monopolies, corporate and government control over our personal data.” Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Guide to Activism.

This quote relates to the work I produce as an artist working with the idea of activism within my practice. Therefore, I would like to introduce you to three of my artworks, The first two pieces, Belonging and Risk Economy, don’t directly attack the UK government, rather they address issues that, I believe, our current government is responsible for. As the UK voted to leave the EU, attacks on those seen as ‘not British’ increased with many non-UK citizens some of whom had been living in Britain for years, feeling like they no longer belonged in the UK anymore. The sculptural installation Belonging is about displacement, the desire to fit in, and the prejudices born out of classification. Make from willow the ball-like structures are distinctly different from the nature they find themselves amongst. Their attempt is to settle into the landscape, however, there is a tension and an awareness that they don't quite belong. They belong to nature, but not to the nature surrounding them, they even look different. For protection, they swarm and huddle together. The piece can be interpreted as a comment on the differences people see in each other, differences that can lead to feelings of not fitting in, of not quite belonging. The work acts as an exploration of boundaries, category, inclusion, and acceptance. This work was first on show at Heathland Artwork Trail in, late summer of 2020, though there was a moment where its perceived lack of connection to Heath meant it very nearly didn’t get accepted. It was its near rejection that forced me to look at the theme of rejection, of belonging to nature but not quite fitting it. It was a success and Belonging was picked up by the Watts Gallery Artists’ Village, UK where it is currently on show until the end of March 2021. This piece sits alongside their current exhibition Art and Action, a look at how artists in the Victorian age, in a move to show the social injustices within society, brought about change. I have since been approached by another gallery, and so from April 2021, Belonging will be shown in The Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden, Dorking, UK.

Not everyone was furloughed during the Covid-19 pandemic and many had no other choice but to work. Delivery drivers working for Amazon the world over were heralded as first responders, as valuable to us as the doctors and nurses who treated the sick and ill. Often on low wages, with little job security and inadequate PPE, they supplied those of us who were privileged enough to order online and take the opportunity to stay safe. It was on such a day, waiting for an Amazon delivery of art supplies needed so I could make art about the social and political injustices in the world, that the sight of many delivery boxes in my studio settled heavily upon me. Risk Economy is a work that comments on the irony of working with supplies that are sorted, packed and delivered by those who have little choice but to work during a pandemic. People taking risks so other people don’t have to. Built out of Amazon boxes delivered to my home, Risk Economy is both a totem to those who put their lives at risk and an altar to consumerism.

The final piece I would like to present is When Things Come Apart, a stylized version of the Statue of Liberty.

Matchstick design files taken from a commercially available Matchutecture matchstick kit depicting the Statue of Liberty have been scaled up 18 times by replacing the matchsticks with 2x2 construction timber so it stands over 8 meters tall weighing 1.6 tons when fully built. Over 100 screwed and glued panels allow the statue to be configured in a multitude of ways, however, it is always exhibited partially dismantled, sometimes standing half-clad, her panels stacked to form a wall, echoing the barricades, reminiscent of the French Revolution, echoing the physical wall that Trump wanted to build and the numerous other metaphorical walls built during that administration. Sometimes shown lying on her side, decapitated, the ideals, inherent in this public monument like ‘liberty’ and ‘inclusion’ – have been taken apart, symbolizing the demise of democracy, liberty, and unity. The recent insurrection resulting in the storming of the Capitol in the USA shows the need to rebuild America, piece by piece over time.

Extensive research has added depth to the piece by establishing a connection between matchstick models and prisoners. This connection brings with it a deeper questioning around the concept of liberty and freedom, now personal as well as global and shows how important research is in the pursuit of making good art. Exploring how POWs, held captive on ship hulks during the 18th and 19th centuries, making models out of matchsticks I spoke with the Maritime Museum in Greenwich to their specialist. He explained matches, being cheap and readily available were the ideal material for prisoners to work with, added to which, matchstick modelmaking is a slow and tedious endeavor suited only to those with time on their hands.

It is true to say that meaning and the ideas behind that meaning are an important aspect of my practice and that is probably true for most artivism. But that meaning must be shown and appreciated to have an effect. I am very pleased with how my work has been received. I am being offered exhibitions and commissions and asked for interviews whereby I can discuss my work. I have certainly not exhausted the themes within my work that interest me, but my practice has shifted slightly due to the pandemic. Ideas to produce more public art in outdoor spaces, using more natural materials is my plan going forward. Saying that I have also managed to produce some very small scale work too during the last few months, but no doubt I will go large scale again when it is easier to do so. The challenge in these times is to find the ways and means to put art in front of those you are trying to influence and impact, and to do that you must also be creative.

BY Deborah Davies

RUBBISH AS A FOUND OBJECT WHTIN ART; AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ABANDONED AND VALUELESS OBJECT WITHIN THE ARTISTIC PRACTICE OF MIKE NELSON & TOMOKO TAKAHASHI

BY ARTIST NICHOLA RODGERS

@nicholajaneart www.nicholajaneart.com

Objects both acquire and lose something when they are abandoned as rubbish. The artist then gives these objects something more when they are reused. Art and everyday life are constantly in flux, intermingling, crossing paths, and making connections. In contemporary thinking, things are usually either a collection of ever-smaller parts or a development of human attitudes/behaviors and societies. All theorists have their own individual ideas. Nothing exists in a vacuum without external influences. Its direction and meaning may be changed, subverted, or abandoned at any time but it is never gone it is always there, just like garbage.

Slavoj Zizek talked about the utopian ideal of recycling as a process to obliterate all waste. He pointed out that garbage isn’t always recyclable, because society constantly creates rubbish that isn’t usable. Society’s idea on recycling to solve the consumer capitalism problem is like Groundhog Day, it’s a problem Zizek feels will never end. Zizek states in ‘Living in the End Times’ …” the radical ecologist is not that of admiring or longing for a pristine nature of virgin forests and clear sky, but rather accepting waste as such, discovering the aesthetic potential of waste, of decay, of the inertia of rotten material that serves no purpose.” Some artists are now seeing garbage as a material to create from not just to discard.

Mike Nelson and Tomoko Takahashi both use the found object as an acceptable material for their work. They explore the different ways they can bring the new agency to this kind of waste, by creating unique installations.

Researching the found object in ‘On Garbage’ by John Scanlan and ‘Rubbish theory’ by Michael Thompson has made me a question and look at consumer capitalism’s constant need for material excess. Through looking at how artists use this excess once it has become waste, and how the theories of Object Ontology (no one thing having special status, Graham Harman,” Tool Being” 2002), is also seen within this style of work.

Object Ontology in action is when an artist transforms obsolete, and discarded objects into artworks and installations. These at some point are then again destroyed or self-destruct; creating an ever-fluctuating and changing cycle that in theory will never end. The dismantling of these installations then abstracts these things more, heightening their inner workings and materiality, only allowing the broken matter to survive. As nothing is ever completely gone, they simply change form and meaning. Even if these things are turned into relics or souvenirs of the original artwork, thus keeping the consumerist cycle going. Giving value back to the found object, the rubbish itself always being there, it has simply moved on and given new meaning.

For Marx “ Only when an object is consumed does it shed its material nature and become a product.” But when this object is discarded, does it then take on its original, previous material being or something new. I would argue that both these things happen. Artist’s reanimate and give a new meaning to the found object, through creating a piece of artwork. This allows the object to be re-encountered by the viewer, who brings both the original meaning and the newly translated agency into being, as they read the work. Thus creating a product again.

Roland Barthes said in an essay from 76’ “The essence of an object has something to do with the way it turns into trash.” My understanding of this is, that when an object has been discarded and is obsolete, it is then absolved of its original function and its materiality and form become more visible. Artworks created for a short-term exhibition may help draw attention to the excess of consumer consumption, and narrow the gap between the worthless and valuable that Scanlan talks about in ‘On Garbage’ - “our distance and separation from rubbish is what makes culture possible- separating the valuable from the worthless”

That divide becomes even more blurred, as artists like Jason Rhoades’s ‘Four roads’ or Mike Nelson with ‘Coral Reef’ and Tomoko Takahashi’’s ‘A product of many departments’ create art installations from the found object, forcing us to look at these once worthless things and reintroducing them into our present being to unintentionally give them value again. The concept of elevating a found object to artistic status has a long history, with the likes of Degas using a real tutu in 1881 within his work, ‘Little dancer of fourteen years”

Marcel Duchamp took this further in 1917 by using a single readymade object as a stand-alone piece of artwork -

‘Fountain’. Using this urinal for his work and calling it art allowed the viewer to connect with the work in a different way.

Exploring the artwork of Mike Nelson and Tomoko Takahashi who don’t use a single object as Duchamp did but who create more of an assemblage of work from ‘Objet Trouve’ (found object), a French phrase describing art created from readymade found objects, not originally produced for artistic purposes.

They create work that is more like a memory, or a twist on a dystopian view of the traditional “cabinets of curiosities,” things collected and displayed from their travels. These found objects have a history, which may or may not be relevant to the work, but what is relevant is what the viewer brings through their own memories. Through the re-use of this found matter classed as garbage, Nelson and Takahashi, create other worlds and artworks that stand in a curious no-man’s land between fiction and documentary. John Scanlan said in the introduction to his book ‘On Garbage’ that:

“…. the use of the word garbage has changed over time, all its instances nonetheless retain a general conceptual unity in referring to things, people, or activities that are separated, removed and devalued.” Artists like Duchamp, Sarah Sze, Jason Rhoades, Nelson, Takahashi, and many other conceptual artists use garbage within their work to utilise these devalued items.

Mike Nelson and Tomoko Takahashi share an interest in found objects and both use these in very different ways to explore the cultural and political environment in which they are contained. Using various forms of media - sculpture, installation, photography, and mixing a variety of detritus and ready-mades objects, they explore political events and fiction, producing work that demonstrates the creativity of the artist’s mind rather than simply their technical skill.

How artists use the found object, can help us to understand Graham Harman’s object ontology theories, and this is particularly evident in the way, in which they do not allow anyone particular object or space to have greater value within the installation, they are assemblages of objects. In Nelsons ‘Again, more things (a table ruin)’, he curates a selection of valuable figurative objects together on a surface that’s low to the ground, undermining the hierarchy of the objects, leveling them to create a sense of the studio floor. In an interview with Magnus Petersen Nelson said, “…the objects selected…to use like detritus from my own fictitious studio…as when it’s in the studio it isn’t precious”

By the very act of throwing away our unwanted objects, we are creating an ever-changing assemblage of detritus in our urban cities and rural countryside. These artists forage these forgotten areas for abandoned objects, and for the cultural values and history contained within them. Giving them new agency and meaning, and bring them to the attention of the public in a way that allows the viewer to create their own narratives.

The clichés often used when the public views contemporary conceptual installations that use found objects or everyday things is that it “looks like junk’. Rauschenberg’s early combines, for example, were often dismissed in this way. Yet he brought new ways of creating and looking at art that is highly influential today. He incorporated found objects of real-life; by doing this Rauschenberg is making you look again at what you already know.

Nelson and Takahashi both use a mix of symbolism, fiction, theory, and reality to create otherworldly installations of order and disorder, creating work that hovers somewhere between documentary and fiction. Their influences come from films, literature, music, and the world around them.

In a Tate interview, Nelson talked about the thinking behind his works “The Coral Reef ” and its sequel “ The Deliverance and The Patience.”

Both works are vast rooms that sprawl out with connecting corridors. It’s not a linear didactic show to follow, more of a web of a tableau to be immersed in. Being influenced by literature, particularly William Burroughs book ‘Cities of the Red Night’ through its montage and fragmented settings. He has created a visual fiction of a dystopian history. His use and choice of objects within his work partly comes from another book of fiction called ‘Roadside Picnic’ by the Strugatsky Brothers from which the film ‘Stalker’ was derived. Its setting is a dystopian wilderness in which ‘stalkers’ or bounty hunters collect objects from around the area, collecting things that are often unrecognizable, and are quite possibly simply rubbish left behind like at a ‘roadside picnic.’

This idea of unknown objects and what they might or could mean informs a great deal of Nelson’s work. Like Rauschenberg Nelson is showing us the everyday object in a new surreal way, this works well, as he is also exploring the fragility of existence, as his work is void of the figure until the viewer is present thus becoming a part of the work.

Takahashi’s work uses found objects in a slightly different way. The work is improvised and not planned or mapped out first. She doesn’t know how it will turn out until its finished. Her influences are the spaces and people involved with the work. Her found objects have to have a personal connection or a certain feel about them before she uses them. In an interview with R.J Preece in 2011, Takahashi said, “ there are three steps, theme first, then objects, then composition” ‘My Play Station’

The above work from the Serpentine took three days to set up. It was a collection of games, pieces of games, old computers, and hobby items. These were used to explore the notion of rules and order, which games follow. One of the questions that Takahashi explores in her work is how to break out of order and the relationship between order and disorder. This work ended up being a give away to the public at the end of the show. It seems strange that people would willingly line up to collect a piece of ‘worthless’ garbage.

Takahashi’s uncertain if this work is a protest to break out of order and rules, or simply questioning order and rules. As showing in a gallery setting creates its own rules to follow, as does Takahashi when she creates her work, at the end of the show people had to queue and were given three raffle tickets to exchange for items, which in itself is another set of rules.

As a result, both these artists create work that raises questions about the found object, and society today, but they also create works that are poetic, have agency, and allow the viewer to create their own story.

The aesthetics of art created with found objects has been an established practice in arts since the 1960s when Pop Art appropriated images and objects for both aesthetic and commercial value. Recycling found objects to create a commodity again, may or may not of course increase its value. The idea of rubbish being valued was challenged during the Pop Art period by conceptual artist Piero Manzoni who decided to create a joke piece by canning his own excrement and calling it “Artist’s Shit” (Merda d’Artista).

In fact, the Tate bought just one can of this work in 2002 for £22,300. This raises the question: when the public sees a work of ‘art’ in this context made of rubbish, does it then not register with the viewer as rubbish but as an artwork of value? Gillian Whiteley talks about several artists from the 1950s to the present day who use ‘objet trouve’ to create assemblage. In her book; Junk: Art and the Politics of Trash (2011). She talks about this redefining of rubbish and says that it is like an obsessive act.

Much like Jason Rhoades, these two particular artists don’t necessarily choose to make art out of waste purely because of environmental issues or to raise awareness of the volume of rubbish. The ideas come from their own minds a play between fiction and reality, the metaphorical and practical. As a result, their work draws the viewer’s attention away from the fact they are looking at rubbish and allows them to enter a new environment of meanings, narratives, and human connections.

The way they work is shown is just as important as the objects themselves, focusing on the experience of the work, not just the aesthetics. The space for conceptual art has to be able to be navigated in an indirect way for the works to be absorbed by the viewer and accepted as art. Both Nelson and Takahashi have the same opinion, that the work should navigate the viewer rather than the viewers navigate around the work.

Michael Thompson talks about three concepts of objects, ‘durables’, ‘rubbish’, and ‘transients’. These are objects of value in museums, discarded obsolete objects, and then the changeable objects that have to be defined as one or the other. These ideas he says are interchangeable. This theory is both in alignment with and contradictory to object ontology’s ideas of things having no hierarchal value and can be seen in the haphazard yet considered way conceptual artists create work. Conceptual works are always discredited at some point within the art world, especially if the work is not understood, and this happens more with artwork that uses garbage, discarded objects, rubbish, and ephemera. Both these artists use rubbish in a certain way to distract you from its origins, creating work that keeps you lost, whether that’s lost within the overwhelming vastness of the piece or lost in the mind and aura of the artist and space.

These types of discarded objects are always going to be something we want to get away from and not confront within everyday life. But the speed at which we are amassing this vast amount of rubbish is growing. Perhaps the only way to live with it is to create art from it. Whether that’s to present it as rubbish to make a point about our consumerist culture of want over need, or to reuse the trash to create other meanings and take us out of this world, all be it for only a moment. If the artist can turn an object of nothing, void of meaning, devalued and casting out, into a creation embedding new meaning and agency to the outcast, then surely this is a step to accepting the rubbish is always going to be here in a constant cycle, but as stated earlier by Zizek - we will never be completely rid of garbage. We should try and accept it and work with it.

Curating and disability activism

If I’m called upon to describe myself in terms of the work I do in the arts, I’ll say I’m a curator. Or I’ll say I’m an activist-curator. If I can use a few more words, I’ll explain that my curatorial practice is informed by my experience of activism, particularly in the disabled people’s movement. This feels like a better explanation. Can curating be a form of activism? That’s what I’ve been trying to explore over the last few years, with a focus on disability.

I came to curating as an activist. Throughout the 1990’s I was a DAN (Disabled People’s Direct Action Network) regional organiser. DAN was the group of disabled people that would typically handcuff ourselves to buses and trains and block roads, in our demands for equal rights and access.

This was a period when disability arts was clearly part of and informed by, the disabled people’s movement. Disability rights anthems were the rallying cry for protestors and disabled artists and performers were amongst the organisers of demonstrations, which were often highly theatrical. At that time, disability arts was tightly defined as being art about disabled people’s lives. Disability arts, therefore, was part of the demand for change.

I didn’t think of myself as a curator when I organised an exhibition of work by disabled artists, in protest at the local council exhibiting Grayson Perry’s tapestries in a venue that was inaccessible for many disabled people. This was activism, using art as the vehicle to draw attention to unfair treatment and exclusion. It did this very effectively, much more effective than writing letters of complaint, using social media, or even holding a protest at the venue might have done. In addition, the exhibition was much more than purely a protest. The quality of work meant that this exhibition became a significant event in its own right, showing fantastic pieces by disabled artists.

There was clearly an appetite in Leeds, where I’m based, to see more work by disabled artists. I was persuaded to organise another exhibition. This was 2016 and, with the attacks on disabled people’s lives, freedom, and dignity being carried out in the name of austerity, I didn’t see how the project could avoid making reference to that. While there were a number of themes in the exhibition, Shoddy called out the government’s “shoddy” treatment of disabled people (an understatement, to say the least), while asserting that disabled people are not of lesser worth than others.

I still didn’t call myself a curator at that point. I was making things up as I went along and I had no training or real knowledge of curating. I was driven to organise projects that aimed to bring about change, or that were at least part of a movement to bring about change. I decided that working with artists, disabled and non-disabled, was an area where I could be effective and to which I could bring my skills and experience. I question whether this is activism, though.

Shoddy, and a later exhibition, Piss on Pity, addressed issues that affect disabled people’s lives, particularly society’s perceptions of disabled people as dependent and as second class citizens, reliant on handouts from benefits or charity. These perceptions are too often echoed within the arts, despite its supposed liberalism, and some of my work tries to challenge this. I wonder again, though, is this activism? I’m not saying it isn’t useful work, and it’s informed by my activist stance, but I’m not sure it can be called activism.

It strikes me that many people within the arts have limited ideas of who disabled artists are and of the type of work they produce. There’s still a lot of stigma around disability in the arts, and disability (and therefore disabled artists) is viewed as entirely negative.

I think this is partly reinforced by the growth in participatory arts, social practice, community arts, and so on. I’m not here to criticise these practices, there is a lot of important work going on, with projects leading to real community engagement and improvement in people’s lives. Disabled people are sometimes the subjects of participatory projects, which need not be a bad thing in itself. But I think that, too often in the talk about disabled people in the arts, they are pigeon-holed as participants in projects that aim to improve wellbeing or reduce isolation, or as audiences for special productions. Disabled artists aren’t recognised as serious professional or emerging artists, with an established, or developing, practice in their own right.

Possible All Along, an online exhibition by disabled artists in Leeds, is an attempt to do something about this. It’s about making disabled artists more visible, at a time when our work is becoming even more sidelined, due to the pandemic. And of course, Covid is having disastrous, wide-ranging consequences for disabled people’s lives. Organising this exhibition felt useful, and part of a larger campaign to amplify disabled artists’ voices and to ensure a sustainable future for disabled artists (see #WeShallNotBeRemoved). The exhibition shows that being a disabled artist is a source of pride, rather than something to be hidden. Is this activism?

According to Maura Reilly, perhaps it is. In her book Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating (2018), she talks about “strategies of resistance”: provoking debate, leveling hierarchies, challenging assumptions, and countering erasure. It’s a pity that her study of curatorial activism omits disability as a subject. In the face of this, perhaps a curatorial practice that raises the profile of disabled artists and puts the issues affecting disabled people at the centre should, in fact, be re-assessed as activism.

By Gill Crawshaw

Bio - I draw on my experience of disability activism to organise exhibitions and events which highlight issues affecting disabled people. Exhibitions have addressed representation (Possible All Along, 2020), charity (Piss on Pity, 2019), cuts to welfare and public spending (Shoddy, 2016), and access (The Reality of Small Differences, 2014). I am interested in the intersection of disabled people’s lives with textile heritage in the north of England, as well as contemporary textile arts. I have a degree in Textile Design and completed an MA in Curation Practices at Leeds Arts University in 2018. I am on the steering group of the Love Arts Festival, highlighting creativity and mental health.

LINKS

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28880537 https://shoddyexhibition.wordpress.com/ https://pissonpityexhibition.wordpress.com/

https://possibleallalong.co.uk/ https://www.weshallnotberemoved.com/

Curatorial Activism: in the Gallery and the Streets

By Lucy Pratt

Bio: Lucy is a recent graduate from the University of Bristol with a first-class degree in Liberal Arts. She has volunteered and interned with multiple arts charities and galleries (commercial and NPO), and now works freelance in arts marketing and research. Creatively, she is a commissioned illustrator and continues to explore personal fine-art projects outside of work.

Artemisia - an overdue retrospective display of the artworks of Renaissance artist Artemisia Gentileschi - is the first-ever solo exhibition focussing on a historic female artist in the National Gallery’s history. Art historian Maura Reilly would deem this an act of ‘curatorial activism’; that is, an exhibition curated without excluding constituencies of artists traditionally excluded from the master narratives of art. Bringing women, artists of color, non-Euro-Americans, disabled and LGBTQ+ artists into the mix, as either subject or object, is an essential consideration for the major UK visual arts institutions, and Reilly has done well to articulate this in her writing. I believe her work is so crucial, in fact, that it is not only upon the walls of our galleries that curatorial activism should be actioned. Our city centres, laced with historic symbols - statues, monuments, and memorials need ethical curation. What has begun with the formidable Artemisia must permeate further. Our towns and cities should represent the diversity of the society that exists within it; it is only with curatorial activism that this can be achieved.

Existing in a certain place for long enough promotes a feeling of familiarity. So much so, that the eyes and mind become blind to the historical and cultural significance of the spaces we call home. Quite easily, one can go to school or work in a building named after a prolific leader or social figure, without thinking twice about the ethics that surround their achievements. Next, we may sit for a lunch break beneath the statue of a dignitary of days gone by with no consideration for the origins of their wealth. We may pause en route home to take in the vast view of the cityscape, with little thought to the hands that may have built it. We become at ease with spaces we inhabit, we accept them, and forget to truly see them.

The collective blindness towards the narratives stitched into the urban landscape is not chronic, however. Minds and eyes are opening. Public concern at the decoration of the built environment has prompted physical action. Bristol’s statue of Edward Colston (a man who, in imperial Britain, made his wealth through the exploitation of black slaves), was pulled from it’s plinth by the hands of Black Lives Matters protestors. Recalling the landmark 2018 student protest against the Cecil Rhodes statue that once stood in the grounds of the University of Cape Town, unrest surrounding the looming legacy of these oppressive figures is ongoing. In Bristol, Colston’s empty plinth, no longer belonging to his bronze cast figure, has been claimed by the people of the city, with guerilla artworks appearing sporadically in the months following Colston’s demise. From a Darth Vader statuette (a commemorative tribute to

Star Wars actor David Prowse, after his death in November 2020) to Marc Quinn’s statue of BLM protestor Jen Reid; an informal, publicly-governed Fourth Plinth seems to have been cultivated. In a city where the local government left Colston’s oppressive figure looming for so long, it feels apt for this space to now be left open for topical installations planted by local people. Indeed, it represents the people’s desire to have input into how their built environment is decorated, and a need for a curatorial activism that considers the community as part of its process.

However, care must be taken not to consider this an issue entirely rooted in the past. This is absolutely a predicament of the future - how we curate our landscapes, from street names to statues, writes a society’s narrative. The built environment is a medium for making sense of the world and our place within it, and for expressing and exploring personal values like belonging, livelihood, memory, and future prospects. It is not enough to deconstruct and replace errors of the past - we must now use curatorial activism to organise public spaces of the future. Yinka Shonibare’s statue of David Oluwale, planned in collaboration with Leeds City Council, cements a legacy for the Nigerian, who drowned in the 1960s after harassment by Leeds police. It is these kinds of actions that promote inclusion and celebrate multiculturality. Following Shonibare’s proposal, can we now see commitments to public representations of women, disabled, LGBTQ+ and all those who exist at intersections of oppression? However, local governments must drive these changes beyond overt reparative gestures such as Shonibare’s statue. Even the words and namesakes embossed into the sheet aluminum that signposts our streets, buildings and green spaces must be given consideration - we are working tokenistically if not.

Artemisia Gentileschi painted the majority of her artworks during the 17th century. Despite her striking portfolio and undoubtable skill, four centuries passed before she was given proper focus in mainstream visual arts. This prolonged erasure is an injustice that should not be repeated. With this in mind, as we step out of the art gallery and into the street, we must carry the method of ethical curation with us, and invest in building diversity in all public spaces.

Armenian Coffee - A Poem For Our Time

A brass coffee pot, Arabic inscription,
one spoon of coffee... Edna’s,
made in Los Angeles by Armenians,
immigrants from Iran. Bought off Kensington High Street in a Persian shop, price extortionate.

Together we are a strange concoction,
a long way from where we began:
my forebears from the region of Nakhichevan, now inside the borders of Azerbaijan,
came from the town of Jukha.
400 years past, their hard-won success
was financed by trade built on silk.
Chock-full of fine churches and superior houses, roused the interest of sovereign Abbas.
This Shah, so ruthless, killed or blinded his sons, to stay King of Kings, Shahanshah.
He burnt it all down, their town;
forcing them to resettle
in Isfahan, his capital: ‘nesfeh jahan’.
In ‘half the world’ they created a new Jukha,
as Armenians are wont to do and their taxes of silk financed his empire.
All that was left of Jukha,
was a cemetery; but one of exceptional criteria.

Unesco’s heritage status bestowed, was swayed
by caviar diplomacy; they said not a word as it was hammered to dust, mindlessly ordered by history revisionists
that wiped away all trace of our past, with their fists.
Instead they declared ‘Azerbaijan – Land of Tolerance!’
What a joke.
Once the coffee’s drunk, leave the dregs
for that’s where future lies.
Balance carefully the saucer on top,
then in one swift turn (towards the heart),
upend the cup. Let be whilst coffee sludge, gravity pulled
congeals into a muddy puddle below.
Patience.
Now look: the future’s bleak, it says.
A fish, rising dorsal fin, eye distinct and mouth agape,
in a boiling, landlocked sea.
Look here, her face – the black Madonna,
now her eyes put out by what she sees.
Gazes into a pit of decrepitude, murder and lies
her churches and sacred sites reduced to rubble and sighs.
That old grandfather Artsakh dragged from his house, cries:
“What have I done to you?”
whilst young guns aroused, slice off his ears.
Bloody and battered he dies.

1

Meanwhile, their algorithms churn out fake news,
inventing atrocities to mirror their own. The world jostles
to get the best views: Armenian Davit
pitted against Azeri Goliath in a mismatched game of thrones.
Syrian mercenaries, salaries paid by King Turk, alongside their soldiers
skin alive and behead POW’s, taking pictures and posting
the revolting carnage on victims’ own phones;
a gruesome keepsake for their loved ones to own.
The President of Turkification,
is finishing the task begun by his forebears.
On British soil another politician, whose great-grandfather Ali,
Interior Minister of a flailing Ottoman autocracy,
knowing the difference between right and wrong, made the greatest folly, and stood up for his beliefs: that you should treat your fellow man with dignity no matter creed or race; was tried for treason, his reward for civility
and gifted to the baying crowd who stoned him, hung him,
and stole his tailor-made trews and European shoes.
Boris, whose name change from Kemal,
to ‘fit as a butcher’s dog’, licks the balls of Erdogan
and gives him titbits of PPE contracts that fail quality tests on arrival.
King Turk brandishes not one, but two Trump towers
gags the West by holding back tsunamis of displaced,
who would otherwise cross the Channel in boats,
to prove that our moat only magnifies their hopes.

Shushi-Shusha, Shushi-Shusha,
A pendulum town swings back and forth
changing hands through time; built a mountain fortress and bustling with life, is now empty
save for ghosts, sharp shooters and dogs.
The townsfolk, displaced to the enclave’s capital,
dream unsettled dreams in dark, dank cellars,
hopes of self-determination crushed to dust.
These are the lucky ones:
others white phosphate burnt or hammered to pieces
by cluster bombs and Israeli-made drones.
In Europe the grey wolf pack, obeying a hunting howl sent out by a million Turkish twitter calls,
roam French cities in search of Ermeni,
club hammers and sharpened knives at the ready. Meanwhile Armenians, displaced since millenia
from historic lands, still sick with grief
over genocide unacknowledged, perpetrators unpunished lament new dead - shouting ‘Pishik the traitor!’
to the Armenian president
whose crime? To be elected democratically
and to turn his back on criminality.

2

‘What a fool!’ they shout, ‘see what comes from it now!’ But he has paid twice: the price?
A death, potential and political
by signing away their precious soil.

Sacrifice, he says, worth it
to save 25,000 more, a whole generation,
from certain death.
Aliyev, the puppet prince of King Turk,
With absolute dictatorship and family fiefdom
in the satellite state of his Ottoman overlord,
declares that this ceasefire,
‘is our Glorious Victory!’
whilst BP bosses cheep their support of the Azeri cause
to oil their pipelines.
And the Biased Broadcasting Corporation
whose reporters behind Azeri lines
regurgitate their version of events;
whilst Armenian prisoners of war,
are forced to kiss Azeri flags before having heads sawn off.
These atrocities still merit no media attention. But Azeri trolls scream: ‘No mercy! Remember 1992, the Massacre at Khojaly!
With hashtags #stoparmenianaggression, #stoparmenianlies.
And more... ‘See! How they desecrate our mosques with pigs!’
Wild swine - who made their homes in long abandoned digs.

A video widely shared on social media sees
an old Armenian gent, who in Azeri Turkish pleads for life.
Unmoved, the Azeri soldier squats over the ancient’s face
and cuts off his head. Right there.
Azeri lass put off her breakfast, complains:
‘Why share this stuff? ‘It’s disgusting, but a film set plain to see, constructed to denigrate our triumphant destiny!
Meanwhile the West’s populations hypnotised first
by US elections, then Brexit negotiations,
picking over the scabs of Covid obsessions, sit mute.
This persecuted Armenian race, who suffered
from crimes executed by the Turkish state:
1915-1923: 1.5 million murdered, tortured and raped;
hacked to pieces, thrown off cliffs, burnt in churches,
hungry, thirsty and diseased, stripped of clothes and dignity,
forcibly converted - still refused to die out.
In 2020, their survivors faced a stark choice: a second genocide
or to give up their historic lands; a shady deal brokered
by a Russian oligarch with a pumped-up body and smile of a cat.
Now a new spat: the Armenian population first
united towards victory, in defeat implodes.
Those who baulk at the ransom’s high price
refuse to see that it spared young lives: brothers and sisters #ourexistanceisresistance! We root, bloom, fruit and grow our tree of life

Bio: I was born in Iran of British/Armenian parents and moved to the UK due to the Islamic Revolution. I have lived in Cumbria since 2009. In 2017 I completed my PhD: Verchatsav! An auto-ethnographic exploration of Armenian–Iranian identity through contemporary art practice, Leeds Beckett University. This included the publication Blood Oranges Dipped in Salt (Wild Pansy Press 2012) a book of fictionalized stories of Armenian migrants set over 400 years across Armenia, Iran, Turkey, Cyprus, the UK, and Canada. An ACE grant supported this project, which included workshops, talks and public readings. 'Swallows and Armenians' was launched in 2019 with a book published by the Wild Pansy Press and included a touring exhibition, audiobook and script for theatre. This project revealed an important story: the Altounyan children, an Anglo-Armenian family from Aleppo, Syria as the inspiration for the writing of the iconic children’s book Swallows and Amazons. Arthur Ransome denied their involvement.

I have had 24 solo and 50 group exhibitions since 1990 inc. The Tetley, Leeds and The Harris, Preston; Peterborough, Bury and Huddersfield Art Galleries and Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London. Awards and commissions include C-Art Cumbria Artist of the Year 2016 and three Arts Council England Lottery Project Awards and most recently an ACE Developing Your Creative Practice Award. I am also a freelance Curator, having curated nine Contemporary Craft Tours for Highlights Rural Touring in the gallery and community venues in Cumbria, Co. Durham, and Northumberland between 2009-2019.

art and activism

By: Rosie Gunn

Instagram: @gunnrosie @film.digital.art

Bio: As Course Leader Rosie Gunn established a distinct identity for the Film & Digital Art BA at UCA, grew recruitment, and forged a community between current students and alumni. Now as a visiting lecturer she focuses on research as an independent academic, artist, and activist on climate change. Her art practice includes photography and moving image in a single screen, multiscreen, and projected works.

Co-founder of Exposures (with Grace Lau, Del LaGrace Volcano, Robin Shaw) in the mid-90s to make photographic work and lead workshops including Women Photo Men. Gunn's images are discussed in Emmanuel Cooper’s book Fully Exposed as well as many regional and national publications from Sunday Times Culture Supplement to international publications from Norway to Brazil. BBC2’s Everyman featured her photography and the Exposures workshops in ‘Sauce For The Goose’. In 1994 she took the Exposures program to the Melkweg in Amsterdam and in 2009 Exposures archive was accepted into the collection at the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths. Works from this period continue to be shown regularly.

ART AND ACTIVISM

In 2015 Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor walked to East London together to visit Kapoor’s Orbit sculpture commissioned for the 2012 Olympics. Both carried blankets as a symbol that stood for the human right to have rest and security. The focus was on London’s East End as the long-time home of immigrants fleeing from oppression and deprivation and to draw attention to the need for a global and humanitarian response to the refugee crisis that was becoming a continuing catastrophe due to conflict and persecution. Since then it seems we have undergone a series of crises; the Brexit vote to leave the EU, Trump as USA president, the Grenfell Tower fire, racist killings by police in the USA, and now the global pandemic Covid-19. In her recent book ‘Funny Weather – Art in an Emergency’ (Picador 2020), art critic Olivia Laing says ‘ I don’t think art has a duty to be beautiful or uplifting, and some of the work that I’m most drawn to refuses to traffic in either of those qualities. What I care about more…. are the ways in which it’s concerned with resistance and repair’. Where art shines a light on the marginalised, raises awareness of issues and seeks change, shouldn’t this all be called ‘activism’?

Feminist artists have been pioneering activists for decades - perhaps near a century now if we think of Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois as proto- feminists. The 1960s ‘second wave’ feminists fought for gender equality and a wider visual vocabulary to describe their goals. By the 80s feminist artists, such Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer focused on statements that drew on the visual vocabulary of advertising using graphics and catchy slogans to comment on the constructions of power and sexuality that we take for granted as truths about women’s value in society. My art practice in the 90s was a feminist exploration of visual pleasure and I also led Women Photo Men workshops in the community to empower women with an ‘active gaze’. I didn’t call myself an ‘activist’ at the time, but perhaps I was?

Keith Haring made graffiti-like pop art using bright primary colour characters to advocate for safe sex and AIDS awareness in the 80s. He and other artists also led the fight against the virus at a grassroots level through die-ins and the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. At the end of the same decade dancers, Michael Clark and Stephen Petronio made ‘Wrong’ for the South Bank Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtJCh9I5E5Y Apart from being a brave act of TV commissioning like we rarely see today, the voiceover calls out the ills under Thatcherism of the UK that was convulsed by a social, cultural and political counter-revolution. It evokes a profound desire for transformation that remains relevant more than three decades on.

Kara Walker’s recent installation Fons Americanus of a 13-metre high fountain in the Tate Modern is inspired by the of Queen Victoria outside Buck House but inverts the function of a memorial by questioning narratives of power through allegory and fable that draws on the interconnected histories of Africa, America and Europe. It encourages us to confront the colonial legacy of the Empire and the slave trade on which the Tate collection itself is founded and is particularly significant in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests last summer that resulted in the Edward Colston statue in Bristol finally being forcefully removed. Despite Priti Patel’s pronouncement of the toppling as ‘utterly disgraceful’ and ‘sheer vandalism’, thankfully there is finally serious reflection about the voluntary removal of other statues around the UK that celebrate our shameful colonial histories. The irony of ‘art removal’ as ‘activism’ is not lost on me, but let’s think about the purpose of these commissioned monuments!

The effects of climate change mostly damage the same countries that suffered under colonialism. The destruction of forests and biodiversity continue at an ever-escalating pace as corporations transfer the bounty that satisfies consumer demand in Europe and North America causing poverty, lack of human rights and the depletion of natural resources across the Global South. Despite decades of eco-activism and campaigning on green issues, it’s only during recent years that there has been a wider acknowledgement that our world is not an infinite resource and that there is a CLIMATE EMERGENCY. (There is also a clear link between these incursions into the forests and the zoonotic cause of pandemics such as Covid-19!) Much of this ubiquitous knowledge has come from Extinction Rebellion’s activism and insistence to TELL THE TRUTH & ACT NOW.

The Rebellion is instantly recognisable; creative messaging use of colour (often hi-vis that signifies ‘hazard’), typography and graphics create powerful statements. Banner-making has played an important role in the UK’s history of protest and activism. Artist Jeremy Deller has collaborated with Trade Union Banner maker Ed Hall on many works dealing with politics and protest over the last couple of decades, but perhaps Extinction Rebellion is more closely drawing on the influence of the Women’s Suffrage Movement whose banners were heavily influenced by the Arts & Crafts Movement and were generally more simple than those of the trade unions.

Over the last couple of years, I have made patches, flags and banners to support XR with a group of local friends – some of us artists, some not – who have come together to share ideas, skills, eco-paint, recycled fabric, tools and more. We value the recycled and the reclaimed and we embrace imperfection in a world where things are too glossy and shiny. This kind of activism is creative and collective - we are all connected and working together with a shared goal. I find positivity and hope in these difficult times by creating together with others in love and grief and rage. I haven’t watched it yet but ‘Craftivism’ was the subject of a BCC documentary earlier this week and looks to be relevant. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rxn0/craftivism-making-a-difference

Through the pandemic, it has been difficult for XR to meet but we have found other ways to create actions like protest digitally or document our creative actions with the hashtag #paintthestreets. Our art and activism have still been seen regularly with socially distanced banner drops from bridges to interactive chalk drawings of vines, flowers, and insects on the paths through the local park.

I conclude with a final quote from Olivia Laing ‘We’re so often told that art can’t really change anything. But I think it can. It shapes our ethical landscapes; it opens us to the interior lives of others. It is a training ground for possibility. It makes plain inequalities, and it offers other ways of living’. Perhaps art provides change’s most important ingredient: imagination.

Issue 10 - Writing - Activism