Sink the Sex Trade

Sink the Sex Trade – Jug

32 h x 22 w cm including handle

Sink the Sex Trade is a feminist jug, originally commissioned by FiLiA, International Feminist Conference. Designed as a campaigning piece calling for the abolition of the sex trade, it features a sailing ship with a fleet of small ships – HMS John, HMS Andy, HMS Pimp and so forth – all of which are sinking in a perilous sea.

I chose the sailing vessel as the motif to connect the piece to the nautical jugs and bowls found in Liverpool and Bristol, centres of the slave trade. The global sex trade we have now is deeply rooted in the the slave trade and in colonialism.  The Nautical ware wished success upon the ships of the Atlantic slave trade and of the trade in commodities – tea, coffee, and spices, in the colonies. You can read more about these jugs here. 

The jug is slab-built, from a dark brown stoneware/earthenware clay mix, with white slip, sgraffito, blue underglaze and clear glazed. It is edged in copper lustre.

Jug rhyme:

On Hartlepool Docks

‘I’ll swallow the lie

That sex work is work

When it’s made a career choice for the Cheltenham Ladies.

But it working class girls expected to give away

Blow jobs for a fiver on Hartlepool

Docks.

So spare me the sermon

That a woman can do

What she wants with her body – the punters couldn’t care less

They’re paying to do what THEY want with the bodies

Of teenage girls groomed to suck off their

Cocks.

 

£950.00