Feminist Satire, No Safe Spaces - Part 3
Gender - Introduction
The featured pot, Cirucs Acts, is one of 23 pots which, along with 2 huge drawings, and 3 videos are on show at Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, one of Poland's most prestigious galleries. This my first ever solo show outside the UK. The Exhibition is now open and runs from July 8th- October 1st, Tuesday - Sunday, 11am-7pm.
Some Background
Feminist Satire is also my first full size museum show in 13 years. None of the pots in this exhibition have been shown in a public space in the UK. They’ve been seen in private galleries – some very private indeed - but never in funded public spaces. All have bumped into one kind of ‘sensitivity issue’ or another. Read the excellent and well informed introduction by Josephine Bartosch here.
The show covers my three main areas of satirical and critical interest: religious extremism, the sex-trade, and gender ideology. All three are forms of ideoglogical extremism. All deserve rigorous mockery, attack, or critique. This post focuses on the pots attacking gender theory and ridiculing some of the politics and institutions that surround it.
A Selection of the Pots
Circus Acts imagines Gender as a Circus, both its institutions and the Ideology. Whipping up the gender players and advocates are the Circus Masters at Stonewall and the Gender Identity Development Service, (GIDS,) followed by the police, the judiciary, the Bank of England, academia, all the main political parties, numerous charities, and the activists wielding their pink and blue striped base ball bats. Performing in the ring are celebrities of the Gender Circus and performing on the high wire are the people they all manipulate.
The Gender Creed, rewrites the Catholic Apostolic Creed - the one I grew up with and can recite to this day - in gender speak. There are far too many words. The first line alone warns you of that, 'I believe in GIDS, the non-birthing-parent-almigthty.' It's exhausting to utter. I'm left breathless every time I try. That said, there really is a non-binary version now. For real. Mine was and is still satire. My fear now is that someone will take it seriously. Perhaps they already have. Text here
The last two images are The Butch Pot and Self Portrait as a Poisoned Chalice. The Butch Pot was prompted by a friend lamenting the loss of images of butch lesbians. I had also noticed that and I'd heard others saying so too. It is a simple visual account of the Leeds Lesbian Strength march in September 2019 - a collection of portraits, many of them butch lesbians. It was the first in the UK to revive the marches we held in the 1980s. Poisoned Chalice is a bitter and quite dark response to the CPA withdrawing my invitation to speak at Ceramic Art London in 2022. I do like that self portrait though. You can read more about the pot and its rhyme here.
