User:DrAdamLasserman/sandbox

Martin Firrell
The Artful Dodger Crossed with an Explosion in a Sequin Factory, self-portrait on red field
Born	(1963-04-04) 4 April 1963 Paris, France
Nationality	British
Known for	text-based public artworks on billboards around the world
Notable work	The Question Mark Inside, St Paul's Cathedral; 4 Tenets for Europe
Style	political and humanist art
Movement	Protest Art
Spouse	William Jackson (2013 – present)
Patron(s)	Stevie Spring, Simon Channing Williams, Justin Cochrane
Website	www.martinfirrell.com see also www.mf.catalogueraisonne.online

Martin Firrell (born 4 April 1963) is a British public artist.

Firrell is known for text-based public artworks on billboards around the world. He uses the poster form to campaign for greater social equality.

He is one of a trio of artists (with Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger) notable for socially engaged public art practice where text is foundational and central to that practice.

His texts address LGBT+ equality, the women’s movement, feminism and gender equality; and universal human rights. The artist's aim is 'to make the world more humane'.

Firrell's billboards often resemble advertising because he hijacks advertising's techniques to achieve artistic-activist ends. This co-opting of commercial techniques and his wholesale colonisation of advertising’s oldest medium - the billboard - makes Firrell a particularly apposite artist for the 21st Century. His work has been summarised as "art as debate".

Early life and education

Firrell was born in Paris, France, unexpectedly, on the pavement outside 71 Champs-Élysées. He was educated in the UK, but left school unofficially at 14 because he "had no more use for it". He educated himself during his absence from school by walking and reading in the Norfolk countryside. He read early 20th-century literature and refers to the works of Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein, together with the French writer Marguerite Duras (with whom he shares his birthday and a high degree of political sympathy), as important influences on his later development.

Cartwheel, Pont des Arts Paris, 1998.

A passage in Anaïs Nin's novel The Four Chambered Heart set Firrell on the path of socially engaged public works. The novel's protagonist concedes that literature fails to prepare us for, or guide us through, the calamities or challenges of life, and is therefore worthless. "My purpose is to campaign in some way for change, using my works as a medium for catalysing debate. If you can raise debate, eventually change will follow."

Firrell sets out to remedy Nin's "worthlessness" of words by using language to raise questions about society, relevant to the vast majority of people and freely available in public space.

Firrell trained originally as an advertising copywriter and is consequently well equipped to hijack public space with slogans like Protest is liberty's ally.

Formative works

Lucid Between Bouts of Sanity is an artist’s manifesto written between 1995 and 1996 and distributed at the Literaturnoye Kafe (Saint Petersburg), Russia and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), The Mall, London UK.

The text is divided into four sections exploring the reductive nature of action, the flaws inherent in language, the consequent difficulty of meaning anything accurately to anyone, and the possibility of using a constrained and reduced language to find a new expressive power. Although brief, the manifesto is a precise and structured review of the expressive means available to any artist whose work is to be founded principally on language. "I felt it must be possible to describe the limits within which all language must operate and so designate a clearly defined space for my own experimentation."

Firrell turned cartwheels on the Pont des Arts in Paris on 4 April 1998. This early performance work reflected the artist's desire to 'upkeel' the world. Cartwheel, Pont des Arts, Paris was the artist's first work conceived expressly for public space. It was photographed for posterity by the artist's confidante, concert pianist Yekaterina Lebedeva, using a 35mm b&w disposable camera.

In the early part of the 21st Century, Firrell experimented with fly-posting pdescriptions of love and loss in London's Soho. These were the first artworks created by the artist in the poster format, the first to occupy space more usually associated with commercial messaging, and the first works intended as public art. The texts are influenced by the work of French novelist Marguerite Duras. The incidents described are autobiographical. Firrell was appointed London Cultural Ambassador for the now defunct International Herald Tribune curating the newspaper's first London Arts Season in 2005, titled "Breathless…" after Jean-Luc Godard's nouvelle vague film of the same title.

1996-2000

• 
  Lucid Between Bouts of Sanity, artist's manifesto, English, Russian, French, published 1996
• 
  Artist Martin Firrell cartwheels over the Pont des Arts, Paris France, in an early performance work, 1998
• 
  You Drink But You Don't Become Drunk, fly-poster, Soho London UK, 2001

First billboards

Celebrate Difference, was the first work made by the artist for display on a commercial digital billboard, and the first of the artist's works displayed by media owner Clear Channel UK (now Bauer Media Outdoor). The digital billboard in question was an early, experimental system installed on the outside of 1 Leicester Square, London WC2H 7NA, seen by an estimated 250,000 people per day. The artwork is a digital animation of b&w images of the artist, two drag queens embracing, and a glitter ball. Text panels punctuate the images calling for acceptance of, and engagement with, what is 'other'. Both the artist's interest in the subject matter and support from media owner Clear Channel/Bauer Media Outdoor have endured.

Never Fall For Someone with a Body To Diet For appeared on the same digital site, speaking particularly to gay culture's emphasis on youth and physical perfection (the site was situated in the main tourist thoroughfare of London’s Leicester Square adjacent to the LGBT+ district of Soho.) The artwork suggests it is more rewarding to look beyond surface attributes and embrace the embodied, flawed, feeling totality of another human being.

The One Irreducible Truth About Humanity Is Diversity paraphrases the findings of the American researcher into human sexuality, Alfred Kinsey. Kinsey noted that difference in human sexual responses was the one universal constant. Variousness was the only thing that could be said, with any certainty, to apply to all human sexual experience. In paraphrasing Kinsey, the artist implies that ‘normality’ in the human being is variance, and societal pressure to conform to what is considered ‘normal’ is merely a socially-inflicted hardship based on an absurdity. The artwork's text is backed by strong vertical lines which both obscure and reveal the artist’s letterforms. These uniform verticals evoke the rigid social structures that were questioned and partly dismantled by Kinsey’s research.

2001-2005

• 
  Celebrate Difference (Glitter Ball), first commercial billboard, Leicester Square, London UK, 2001
• 
  Never Fall for Someone with a Body To Diet for Leicester Square, London UK, 2001
• 
  The One Irreducible Truth about Humanity Is Diversity mainline railway station, London UK, 2005

Gertrude Stein

In the artist’s own words,‘Gertrude Stein has acted as my centre of gravity since I discovered her existence in the 1980s. I admired her courage, her work, her unapologetic lesbianism, her marriage to Alice B. Toklas, and her masculinity. She was my mirror image, a masculine woman to my feminine man. She defied gender. She defied definitions of all kinds. She forged boldly ahead. And she inspired me, in my own way, to do the same.’ In many ways Stein’s output is diametrically opposite to that of the artist. Her work deals in ambiguities, arcane codes, and language used for the sake of its sound alone. In Firrell’s work there is no ‘free space’ for overlaying one’s own interpretation. His works are noted for being abundantly clear. His simple, often spare language is immediately assimilable. He is interested in the ‘single field of meaning’ where text is self-contained, and yields up its entire value in a single glance. He has said, ‘When I wrote All Men Are Dangerous (Tate Britain 2006 / UK-wide digital billboards 2019) I wrote something of immense truthfulness and importance with all of its meaning available in a single field.’ Stein demonstrated a deep, intractable commitment to her own path, even when she was dismissed as being mad or on drugs (or both). Stein granted herself the freedom to develop, unilaterally, as both an LGBT+ woman and an artist. This was the greater influence on Firrell than her idiosyncratic use of language. - Queerest

Firrell has said,‘I was born in paris all over again when Idiscovered 27 Rue de Fleurus and the lives of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.’ The impact of Stein is less easy to discern in Firrell’s mature works, but it is Stein that the artist names as having had the greatest influence. The encounter with Stein coincided with the arrival of professor Linda Merians in London (Merians is emeritus Chief of Staff at Guttman Community College, New York City). She encouraged Firrell’s study of Gertrude Stein, commenting that her own students were often too timid to tackle the mysterious and perplexing oeuvre of the ‘mother of modernism’.

Firrell makes oblique reference to Stein’s work in Lucid Between Bouts of Sanity, writing, 'obscurity may be the attempt to say something that meaning cannot mean.'

Firrell ultimately stepped back from obscurity as an artistic strategy, away from the labyrinthine complexity of a writing style like Stein’s. He was not, in the end, lured by the attraction of ambiguity as a way of understanding the world. He chose instead to comment directly on the world as it is. it is as if he wanted, in Virginia Woolf’s words, ‘to have the courage to look at life and see it for what it is’.

At a low point, early in his career, he wondered if it was actually feasible to continue pursuing a career as a public artist, or was the personal cost simply too great. On a hot summer afternoon in North London,he came close to giving it all up. Then there was a knock at the door and a neighbour handed him a small package from Professor Merians. Merians had written on the wrapping, ‘your favourite voice from America.’ The package contained a cassette tape recording of Gertrude Stein reading her work at Columbia university on 30 January 1935 during her lecture tour of the US. As stein introduced an extract from The Making of Americans, she tripped up over the words of her own title. Firrell noted that she did not stop, falter or apologise, but simply carried on. Confronted by stein’s indefatigable ability to simply carry on, he realised he too would simply carry on, pursuing his fortunes as a public artist in spite of, or even because of the difficulties. ~ Monograph

Repurposed systems

Firrell experimented with repurposing existing information systems between 2003 and 2004. A Stronger Self was commissioned by Selfridges for the plasma screens recently installed throughout the London department store. Eleven short video sequences were screened continuously for six weeks from 1 February 2003. Texts explored the principles of self-possession, self-knowledge, and the relationship between self and other. Texts were combined with symbols of self including the artist’s fingerprints and iris scans, images of Lord Krishna, Saraswati, lotus flowers, and cake. Early time-based works like this one were created using the now defunct software Adobe Flash which raises a new set of challenges in relation to the restoration and conservation of works like this and its contemporaries.

I Would Have Given Anything for Your Call was devised for the Samsung neon that used to constitute a significant part of the advertising signs in Piccadilly Circus, London UK. The writing, designed for the digital scroller above the Samsung logo, evokes the heightened receptiveness of new lovers to small joys or hurts.

Firrell repurposed the VDU system at Liverpool St Railway Station, London UK, in the same year. The standard security message was accompanied by an existential 'security message' about the burden of loneliness. It is not uncommon for railway stations to be regarded as anonymous spaces, teeming with people but simultaneously insulating people from one another. A Subterranean Sadness addresses this shared feeling of dissociation and the human desire for connection, not isolation; for warmth, not sadness.

Firrell reprogrammed the EPOS system at Border’s Books so that every Borders' till receipt carried a public art messages about the societal significance of contemporary writing. In Paula, Michael and Bob, the added text conveys the idea that written culture is uniquely placed to reflect, and bring into awareness, the spirt of the times. Paula Yates came to prominence in the 1980s as co-presenter (with Jools Holland) of the Channel 4 pop music programme The Tube. This artwork was at once modest in ambition, requiring no additional resources for its execution, but broad in scope bringing many thousands of public art texts into circulation. Sufficient copies of the texts were distributed to qualify the artwork for the best-seller lists had it not been a freely distributed work of public art.

2003-2005

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  A Stronger Self, Selfridges, London UK, 2003
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  I Would Have Given Anything for Your Call, Old Samsung sign, Piccadilly Circus, London UK, 2004
• 
  A Subterranean Sadness, repurposed VDU, Liverpool St Station, London UK, 2004
• 
  Paula, Michael and Bob, till receipt from reprogrammed EPOS, Borders Books, London UK, 2004

Projections

Firrell was commissioned by The Guardian newspaper in 2006 to make an original work responding to a contemporary news item. He proposed a large-scale projection onto Parliament of the text, When the World's Run by Fools It's the Duty of Intelligence To Disobey as a comment on the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill - a piece of UK legislation that was well-intentioned but unworkable and had, ultimately, to be abandoned. The work published by The Guardian was a relatively crude artist's impression but was mistaken by most for a realised artwork. Many commissions followed in the belief that Firrell, who had never created an outdoor projection at the time, was an expert in the medium. Firrell did not disabuse anyone of this impression, making large-scale digital projections for the Guards Chapel, spiritual home of the Household Division of the British Army, the National Gallery in London, the Houses of Parliament, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Tate Britain, and St Paul's Cathedral.

The Question Mark Inside was commissioned by Dean and Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral as the first large-scale public artwork in the cathedral's history. Firrell served as Public Artist in Residence 2007-8, marking the 300th anniversary of the topping-out of Sir Christopher Wren's architectural masterpiece in 2008.

The Question Mark Inside posed the simple question, 'What makes life meaningful and purposeful?' and invited responses from the public during the anniversary year. Firrell investigated belief, non-belief and the politics of both positions in conversation with the clergy at St Paul's, novelist Howard Jacobson, humanist philosopher A C Grayling, and columnist Caitlin Moran. The resulting texts, from the domestic to the sexual to the sublime, were projected onto the exterior of the cathedral dome, the West Front at Ludgate Hill, and the interior of the Whispering Gallery.

As Artist in Residence with the Household Division of the British Army 2009, Firrell engaged with contemporary ideas of heroism. The moving-image projection work Complete Hero included interviews with Lance Corporal Johnson Beharry VC; with writers, thinkers and performers including actor Nathan Fillion speaking of the contemporary male hero in cult popular culture, writer Adam Nicolson speaking of the hero in literature, with the writer and speaker April Ashley, comedian Shazia Mirza, and philosopher A. C. Grayling.

Deborah Bull as Creative Director of the Royal Opera House said of Firrell: "Yes he's a provocateur if you like, but the underlying message is very rarely 'life's rubbish and you're all a bunch of sharks'.... He's seeking to move beyond simple messages to something which provokes in the viewer a new sense of themselves and their place in the world".

The Question Mark Inside, a television documentary produced by Simon Channing Williams, was first broadcast by Sky Arts 1 on 29 October 2009, and provided new insights into Firrell's opinions, aims, daily life and practice. Firrell discussed his view that contemporary art has lost its way, serving a self-elected elite, rather than the wider interests of humanity. Art's proper place is at the centre of everyday life as a powerful force for good, a joyous expression of our shared humanity. Firrell's personal motto is "why settle for the art world when you can have the whole world?" The purpose of existence is to develop the richness and meaning of lived experience - art and culture in general should be key contributors to this central project and their success or otherwise can be measured against this criterion.

About working with text Firrell said, "I felt there was a problem with narrative because it unfolds in time necessarily, and I was jealous of the painters where everything in painting is available in a single field. Simply, I wanted to make words work like a picture and that led me to writing aphorisms. When I wrote All Men Are Dangerous for Tate Britain, I wrote something of immense truthfulness and importance with all of its meaning entirely available in a single field."

In most of Firrell's works it becomes apparent that uppermost is the belief in the redemptive power of ideas, directed at extending or protecting the right of the individual to create their own unique way of life and to live it accordingly without interference. He has worked with complex and influential organisations, including the Church of England (Public Artist in Residence, St Paul's Cathedral, 2008 and again in 2016) and the British Army (Artist in Residence, Household Division, 2009). These organisations have engaged with audacious, self-questioning project content, including I don't think this is what God intended (West Front, St Paul's Cathedral, 2008) and War is always a failure (North elevation, Guards Chapel, 2009).

In 2006, The Guardian described Firrell as "One of the capital's most influential public artists". Writing in The Independent, Howard Jacobson stated, "I like words on public buildings and Firrell is a master at gauging their power." Caitlin Moran for The Times described Firrell's work as being built on "huge, open-chord statements that make your ears ring".

Several themes and campaign positions recur: a plea for the value of things that are different and the point of view that what is different should be investigated for potential rather than rejected as "other" or perceived with suspicion or fear (Celebrate Difference, LED screen, Leicester Square 2001; Different Is Not Wrong, Curzon Cinemas, 2006–7; I Want To Live In A City Where People Who Think Differently Command Respect, The National Gallery, London, 2006). The artist has also consistently campaigned for gender equality and from what is customarily regarded as a feminist position (I Want To Live In A City Where Half The People In Charge Are Women, The National Gallery, London, 2006; Why Are Women Still Discriminated Against? The Question Mark Inside, St Paul's Cathedral, London 2008); Women Are Much More Honourable Than Men, quoting April Ashley, Complete Hero, Guards Chapel, London, 2009). The subjects of maleness, violence and war tend to appear in association with one another; war is often commented upon but not necessarily from a purely pacifist perspective (All Men Are Dangerous, War Is A Male Preoccupation, Keep The Faith, Tate Britain 2006; I Don’t Understand Why There Is War, The Question Mark Inside, St Paul's Cathedral, London, 2008; War Is Always A Failure, Complete Hero, Guards Chapel, London 2009).

The majority of these works include some form of ancillary visual motif. Most common are vertical lines, either scrolling from left to right, or presented as static fields in "agitated motion". Vertical lines are used to back, or underscore text, or to reveal and obscure text. Customarily the lines have been presented as white light. This vertical line motif appeared in every work between 2006 and 2010 with the exception of I Want To Live in a City Where... (The National Gallery, London, 2006).

Firrell returned to projection in 2016 with Fires Ancient & Modern, commissioned by Artichoke as part of London's Burning, a festival of arts and ideas to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London. He used high definition digital projection to set the dome of St Pauls "ablaze" again and explored metaphorical and often lesser known "fires" from the history of progressivism. against the fly-tower of the National Theatre, Fires Modern presented 18 moments in the history of the progressive movement including reference to black history, the history of the women's rights movement, fascism in Britain, racism, murder, and contemporary references to social inclusion movements like LGBT+ and modern race equality.

2006-2009, 2016

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  I Want To Live in a City Where No One Is Sent to War, the National Gallery, London UK, 2006
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  All Men Are Dangerous, Tate Britain, London UK, 2006
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  Power Is Always Temporary, Royal Opera House, London UK, 2007
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  The Question Mark Inside (Think), St. Paul's Cathedral London UK, 2008
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  War Is Always a Failure, Guards' Chapel, Wellington Barracks, British Army, London UK, 2009
• 
  Fires Ancient, St. Paul's Cathedral London UK, 2016
• 
  Fires Modern, Royal National Theatre London UK, 2016

Cinema and pop culture

Many of Firrell's works explore the contention that 'popular culture may be better than high culture at disseminating valuable ideas about living well to the greatest number of people'.

Untitled (Curzon Trailer) appeared immediately before every feature film screened by cinemas in central London in 2006. The work reflects on the impact of globalisation and the risks of uniformity. Text flickers and glows to a soundtrack of repeated, and disconcerting, hissing-and-clicking. We are reminded that conformity is a prerequisite for globalisation and that danger is imminent when difference is questioned, removed or destroyed. The trailer concludes with a set of 'grounding or corrective statements' including, A Loud Voice Is Not Charisma, Shopping Is Not Happiness and 'Different' Is Not 'Wrong' .

Metascifi (iOS app published 4 April 2015, now retired) mined popular American television science fiction for philosophical ideas with direct bearing on the project of enriching lived experience. Contributors included Kate Mulgrew (aka Captain Kathryn Janeway, Star Trek: Voyager), Joe Flanigan (aka Colonel John Sheppard from Stargate Atlantis), Torri Higginson (aka Dr Elizabeth Weir, Stargate Atlantis), Ben Browder (aka Commander John Crichton, Farscape).

It Ends Here (2014) was commissioned by Twentieth Century Fox Film Company to coincide with the release of the eighth film in the Planet of the Apes franchise, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Firrell's intention was to explore the deeper meaning of Planet of the Apes' particular corner of pop culture, locating truths that cast light on our attempts to live humanely in an over-crowded and tension-filled world" The project extended Firrell's interest in ‘mining popular culture for quite serious content’ The artist deployed live performers in theatrical environments.

Metafenella is an interactive video portrait of the late British actress Fenella Fielding, England's First Lady of the double entendre. Video portraiture draws out life lessons from Fielding's roles as the vampiric Valeria Watt in Carry On Screaming, as Herself and Lady Hamilton in The Morecambe & Wise Show, and as The Voice in the cult TV series The Prisoner. "I try to affect the texture of the moment because the only thing we can be sure of is this actual moment in our lives."

May 1968 compares the readiness to protest in France in 1968 with the apparent apathy in the UK 40 years later. Firrell's May 1968 was screened at Curzon Cinemas as part of the 2008 festival All Power to the Imagination: 1968 and its Legacies. It asked the question, 'Where are the mass protests now? Against detention without trial? Against compulsory ID cards? Against illegal war?' This is the first of the artist's works to deal explicitly with the mechanics of protest.

2006-2014

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  In a Globalised World Everyone Comes to Look the Same, Expect the Same, Buy, Think and Believe the Same from Untitled (Curzon Trailer), Curzon Cinemas, London UK, 2006
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  Religion Can Be Very Time Consuming from MetaFenella, digital portrait of Fenella Fielding, 2014
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  Idiocy Walks With Wisdom from It Ends Here commissioned by 20th Century Fox, London UK, 2014
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  Home screen of Metascifi, iOS app, London UK, 2014
• 
  Liberty Dies Where There Is Agreement Without Thought or Argument from May 1968, Curzon Cinemas, London UK, 2008

LGBT+ protest art

Firrell has been described as an activist, a campaigner and a benign propagandist as well as an artist. These differing epithets beg the question, What is of central interest to the artist? Is it the artistic content or the change that content might help to precipitate? Firrell's body of work, surveyed as a whole, indicates a central interest in the debate itself and the means of catalysing that debate. His work deals with the imagination of activism, the creative expression of protest, rather than the outcomes of protest per se.

Firrell's work engages with LGBT+ rights, gender and racial equality, socialism, and the value of things that are different. That said, the qualitative aspect of protest, ‘the immense and vast beauty of justice’ in Firrell's own words, constitutes the core of his artistic preoccupation. There is an elucidatory force in the directness and sparseness of the language used. The works are plain speaking, teutonic almost. Whilst the means and aesthetics may be very different, Firrell’s works can be regarded as the logical descendants of paintings like Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People.

All Identity is Constructed appeared on UK digital billboards in 2016 examining the principle that all identities, regardless of their differences, are arbitrary constructions. Some may be less usual than others but all are similarly made-up. According to Creative Review, "The work, which gives voice to three different identities in a series of 90-second video works, presents the act of choosing one's identity as a human right. The project, says Firrell, is 'motivated by a desire to make life easier for people who don't fit into the usual identity "moulds"'."

Remember 1967 marked the 50th anniversary of the UK 1967 Sexual Offences Act on 27 July 2017. UK digital billboards were 'taken over' for the day, re-presenting demands made originally by 1960s activists that still warrant attention in the artist's view. Firrell worked with human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell on the Remember 1967 project. Texts include "embrace lesbianism and overthrow the social order", "homosexuals and women are systematically oppressed by male supremacist society" and "overturn the ideology of hetero male supremacy".

Homosexuals Are Still Revolting marks 50 years since the founding of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in the UK and the beginning of the modern LGBT+ rights movement. The series is comprised of three large format digital billboards plus a special six-billboard installation. The artist’s text is a play on a protest placard made by human rights campaigner (and former GLF member) Peter Tatchell for 1973’s London Gay Pride. CR

Five Decades of Pride was created to commemorate on 1 July 2022 the 50th anniversary of the first Gay Pride march in the UK. The original Pride march was a bold political statement with high stakes. By effectively outing themselves, marchers could lose their jobs or their homes, or both. There was no equality legislation, no protected characteristics, no safeguards. A person could be fired or evicted simply for being gay. Firrell invited the LGBT+ community, activists and their allies to reflect on the most important issues facing the community in the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, the 2000s and the 2010s. 5 key LGBT+ milestones were identified, one for each decade, and these became the subjects of the 5 artworks in the series.

2016-2022

• 
  All Identity Is Constructed, UK-wide, 2016
• 
  Remember 1967, UK-wide, 2017
• 
  Homosexuals Are Still Revolting, UK-wide, 2020
• 
  Five Decades of Pride, UK-wide, 2022

Manipulated media

Found footage titled Boys Beware (1961, Sid Davis Productions, USA) warns young people in America to beware of homosexuals who will take more than they give. Firrell's re-edited version reverses the roles of the two main characters. Now it is the young hitchhiker who is the sexual predator, taking advantage of a wholly reasonable and friendly older driver. The artist's version, re-titled Beware of Boys, ridicules the idea that homosexuality is a mental illness, inherently predatory, and a danger to society.

When radical feminist theorist Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol, the newspaper headline read Andy Warhol Shot by Actress, Cries 'He Controlled My Life'. The reporting was lazy and fitted a pre-existing perception that Warhol was surrounded by crazy 'art people' and unbalanced 'superstars'. The newspaper headline didn't even refer to her by name. Though Solanas was abused, dismissed or ignored throughout her life, history has since recognised her as one of the most important radical feminist theorists of the 20th Century. The reworked newsprint reflects this change in Solanas's status.

Regarding men as objects of sexual desire is a queer hobby and a political act. Women have been similarly objectified for years. This is what gender equality looks like.

2021-2025

• 
  In a Globalised World Everyone Comes to Look the Same, Expect the Same, Buy, Think and Believe the Same from Untitled (Curzon Trailer), Curzon Cinemas, London UK, 2006
• 
  Idiocy Walks With Wisdom from It Ends Here commissioned by 20th Century Fox, London UK, 2014
• 
  Liberty Dies Where There Is Agreement Without Thought or Argument from May 1968, Curzon Cinemas, London UK, 2008

Co-opting commercial billboards

Cod Wars Turned Me Gay UK, 2020.

From 2017, Firrell adopted the commercial billboard as the expressive form central to his public art practice. Over time, the key elements of Firrell’s art making in the medium have become easily recognisable. His billboards resemble advertising because they deploy the strategies customarily used by commercial art directors and copywriters (Firrell started his career as an advertising copywriter in 1982). Headlines are bold and short. In later works the typeface is invariably DIN 1451 and headlines are presented in a square block centred in the 48-sheet billboard frame. Noted for its simplicity and clarity, 1451 is the typeface used for German road signs and mirrors the artist’s declarative use of language.

In The Art of Protest (Gestalten, Berlin 2021) Penny Rafferty describes Firrell as ‘offering up uncanny socially engaged texts that mimic traditional advertising language and imagery’. She goes on to observe, ‘Firrell’s work provides public-space poetics that stay with the viewer as they walk down the street or get off the bus. These moments of interruption are both surreal and multilayered. Firrell does not offer a solution to these political problems but, instead, he opens up an inner dialogue with the viewer for them to muse over their own understanding and their own solution.’

According to Firrell, ‘Words make it possible to share the way we see the world and to discover, perhaps, that we’re really not so different from each other.’ Firrell has been clear about the value of provoking debate: ‘If you can raise debate, eventually change will follow.’ In the context of LGBT+ equality this is clearly true. What is hidden or unspoken will never be understood and embraced. Visibility and debate are the engines that drive social progress. Many of the artist’s works have a gentle but definite inflammatory quality. They set out to add fuel to the fire of debate, and many other commentators have noted that it is in the debate that the art actually resides. It is what is thought or said later as a consequence that completes the artwork.

Cod Wars Turned Me Gay is typical of the artist’s mature work. It looks like advertising. The text dominates the other formal elements, in this case an anonymised trawlerman who acts as illustration to the text rather than a comment on it. The artwork is also paradigmatic in ways which are not immediately obvious. It was created to mark the 50th anniversary year of the UK’s first Gay Pride March in 1972. The artist’s research identified other significant events in the UK in that year including the so called ‘Cod Wars’ - disputes about fishing rights between the UK and Iceland. Cod Wars Turned Me Gay tells the true-life story of one teenager's realisation of his gay identity. Scenes on TV of burly trawlermen in conflict over fishing rights triggered a homoerotic awakening. At the same time, the artwork gently satirises the view, prevalent in the early 1970s, that people could 'catch' or 'be turned' LGBT+.

The American art critic Daniel Gauss, writing in Arte Fuse, identified Firrell's use of text as constituting "direct engagement that rejects the need for any analysis. Firrell is convinced that by using language he can meaningfully engage others in constructive dialogues to make the world more humane."

Controversy

Many of the artist’s works have a subtle but definite inflammatory quality. They set out to add fuel to the fire of debate, and many commentators have noted that it is in the debate that the art actually resides. It is what is thought or said later as a consequence that completes the artwork.

All Men Are Dangerous Tate Britain, London UK, 2006.

Firrell has said, ‘If you can raise debate, eventually change will follow.’ What is hidden or unspoken will never be understood or embraced. Visibility and debate are the engines that drive social progress. ~ queerest

All men, man spreading, cod wars etc

socialism is a really bad idea! when critics lampooned gertrude stein’s work, she used to quip that at least it showed her ‘sentences got under their skin’ . something similar occurred when the union city series appeared in public. several rightwing groups ridiculed the work, adding words and commentary to the artworks in the series. socialism is a moral idea was vandalised to read, ‘socialism is a really bad idea’ . several familiar tropes of the far right were aired including union city 105 conflating socialism with the soviet union, and attempting to drive a wedge between different groups in response to union city’s presentation of social equality. ~ Monograph

Serialism

This extended serialism feels new in Firrell’s oeuvre, and it is to the credit of Clear Channel that the media company’s comprehensive support of the artist has made this serialism possible. In so many ways, literal and metaphorical, Clear Channel has given Firrell ‘the freedom of the city’. This has extended the scope and reach of his works, and the artistic content reflects this new expansiveness.

This is particularly apparent in the Counter Culture Rising series. Here Firrell uses the medium in an unusual way. The works are linked more by association than by a direct narrative, or even thematic, connection. The relationships between the artworks have a Dada-esque quality in that they suggest a single narrative cut up and rearranged. But unlike the cut and randomised poetry of Dada, they never actually come to rest in a final configuration. The unfolding of the narrative is dependent on the order in which the observer encounters the artworks. It is new every time. Every permutation has been designed to produce an impression of some value.

the 12 billboards of the counter culture rising series convey a single cinematic narrative. collectively, the billboards tell a story of alien visitation, warnings about climate catastrophe and war, the threat posed by machine intelligence, the power of living peacefully and advanced states of consciousness. the hippy counter culture was often associated with ufo phenomena: hippies living psychedelically tended to see all kinds of things in the sky. a flying saucer will deliver an important message refers to the belief that alien visitation was imminent. this was a persistent trope of the 1950s and 60s. aliens would visit earth with dire warnings about man’s reckless atomic testing or degradation of the environment. alien wisdom would ultimately lead to a raising of human consciousness that would save the planet. or the aliens would simply destroy humanity to protect the earth. the counter culture movement opposed consumerism because of its calamitous effects on the earth’s biosphere. hippies regarded metal and mechanisation as harsh, inorganic and inhuman, placing emphasis instead on access to green space, communal living, healthy eating, respect for the planet and consuming less. the earth’s crust is almost exhausted refers to the hippies’ prescient warnings that the earth was / is close to collapse through over-exploitation. war is always a failure quotes visually from the labadie collection button badge. the artwork re-expresses the anti-militarist position that war is both immoral and ineffective. (historically war has proven a poor producer of lasting regime change). since war is always a failure it has no authority. living peacefully is a radical political position echoes the more colourful ‘bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity’ (anti- vietnam war placard, 1969). the attempt to eliminate war with war is, of course, nonsensical. radically different strategies are required. the counter culture movement embodied the ideal that the route to peace was peace itself. simple non-participation can have an unexpectedly radical quality as illustrated in the slogan, ‘suppose they gave a war and no one came’ (the title of a 1966 article in mccall’s magazine by writer charlotte e. keyes, quoting the american poet carl sandburg). the american civil rights movement shaped the political consciousness of the 1960s. non-violent protest was widely used to condemn racism and demand equal rights for all citizens. any word used to hurt or humiliate is obscene reflects the idea that it is the intention that lies behind a word, as much as the word itself, that reveals most about people’s prejudices. any word intended to alienate or deny another person’s humanity is automatically an obscenity. billboard on the highway: control your anger appears on a billboard on the highway. this self-referential, almost 138 counter culture rising hallucinatory aspect is intended to stimulate higher levels of consciousness - an enduring preoccupation of the 1960s counter culture movement. the artwork instructs the viewer to control their anger. the control of anger - and of all emotions - is the essential first step on the path to equanimity and peace. in some ways this artwork completes the cycle of works that the artist began with all men are dangerous (first shown at tate britain in 2006 and subsequently as part of power and gender in 2019). the only way to contain the danger is, first of all, to contain the rage. it stands to reason that billboard on the highway is most complete as an artwork when appearing on a billboard on the highway, viewed by someone about to lose control of their anger. more than five decades ago, the hippy movement warned that mankind and the machine would soon be at war. war is coming between man and machine repeats this warning at a time when contemporary commentators are already pointing to the negative effects of mobile phone use and social media on young people. meanwhile, sociologists warn that artificial intelligence may well undermine the fabric of our societies, giving rise to mass unemployment and grave social inequality. by the late 1960s, the hippy movement had already identified, and warned against, the potential for machine intelligence to shape public opinion. now questions are being asked about the counter culture rising 139 role social media has played in american presidential elections and the uk referendum on membership of the european union. by feeding people information that reinforces the beliefs they already hold, social media can exaggerate ‘herd thinking’ . manipulated in this way, people come to believe their own views are ‘normal’ and any opposing views are aberrant. computers control and manipulate public opinion highlights the unfortunate relevance of this idea 50 years later. in search of spiritual renewal, the counter culture movement looked to the east. important figures included alan watts, who interpreted eastern philosophy for the west and the indian mystic meyer baba, who claimed to be the incarnation of god on earth. the eastern spiritual principles of karma and reincarnation held a fascination for many hippies. the idea of an enduring and essential ‘self’ stood in stark contrast to the ‘throwaway’ consumerist culture of 1960s america. your seed atom enters a new body with each incarnation refers to the spiritual processes of reincarnation. as a consequence of those processes, a person’s ‘seed atom’ has a higher spiritual agency, independent of any earthly authority. it is ultimately free of, and immune to, all and any earthly interference. the counter culture movement readily embraced the possibility of alternative realities, perhaps as an antidote to the reality of war and the draft, and an increasingly reactionary society that took a dim view of anyone ‘dropping out’ . 140 counter culture rising enthusiasm for things paranormal may also be explained by the movement’s association with psychedelic experiences and ‘altered states of perception’ - hippies were regularly perceiving all kinds of inexplicable and apparently miraculous things. telepathic transit opens between the earth and the moon announces the arrival of a mind-based transit system, the ultimate freedom from the authority of the government and ‘straight’ society. the telepathic transit system requires only ‘krishna consciousness’ to propel the traveller instantaneously to the moon. this telepathic mobility promises complete and ultimate physical and mental freedom. when hippies levitated the pentagon, in some ways they liberated consciousness itself. get ready for the unfoldment of super consciousness refers to this drawing down or ‘unfolding’ of higher consciousness onto the earthly plane. super consciousness as a solution to humanity’s problems was a common theme in the ‘eastern’ strand of the counter culture. the unfoldment of super consciousness would end war, and all other injustices. a recipe for ‘haschich fudge’ appears in the alice b. toklas cook book first published in 1954. the recipe was given to alice toklas by her friend, the british-canadian artist, brion gysin. made from spices, nuts, fruit, and cannabis, ‘haschich fudge’ quickly became a sensation in its own right. toklas described it as ‘the food of paradise’ and ‘easy to whip up on a rainy day’ . she counter culture rising 141 advised that it would produce extensions of anyone’s personality on ‘many simultaneous planes’ . as a result of her cook book’s success and this recipe’s infamy, alice. b toklas’ name became synonymous with, and slang for, marijuana. i love you alice b. toklas plays on these multiple layers of meaning. the text itself, ‘i love you, alice b. toklas’ , is taken from the title of a 1968 film starring peter sellers. the film’s title refers to the toklas recipe, which plays a pivotal role in the film’s madcap plot: take 1 teaspoon black peppercorns, 1 whole nutmeg, 4 average sticks of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon coriander. these should all be pulverised in a mortar. about a handful each of stoned dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them together. a bunch of cannabis sativa can be pulverised. this along with the spices should be dusted over the mixed fruit and nuts, kneaded together. about a cup of sugar dissolved in a big pat of butter. rolled into a cake and cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a walnut, it should be eaten with care. two pieces are quite sufficient. the text i love you alice b. toklas can also be read as a literal tribute from the artist to alice b. toklas and her wife, the great american experimental writer, gertrude stein. Firrell has said, ’i was born in paris all over again when i discovered 27 rue de fleurus and the extraordinary lives and work of gertrude stein and alice b. toklas. ’ 142 counter culture rising in many ways, this final artwork in the counter culture rising series brings us back, full circle, to the young Firrell and his epiphanal discovery of stein and toklas towards the end of the last century. it can be seen as the public repayment of a debt, a way of saying ‘thank you’ for the inspiration of the stein/toklas marriage and the determination of these women to make their own lives and works regardless of the judgement of others.~ Monograph

Counter Culture Rising, 2020

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  A Flying Saucer Will Deliver an Important Message from Counter Culture Rising, UK-wide, 2020
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  The Earth's Crust Is Almost Exhausted from Counter Culture Rising, UK-wide, 2020
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  War Is Always a Failure from Counter Culture Rising, UK-wide, 2020
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  Living Peacefully Is a Radical Political Position from Counter Culture Rising, UK-wide, 2020
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  Any Word Used To Hurt or Humiliate Is Obscene from Counter Culture Rising, UK-wide, 2020
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  Billboard on the Highway: Control Your Anger from Counter Culture Rising, UK-wide, 2020
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  War Is Coming Between Man and Machine from Counter Culture Rising, UK-wide, 2020
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  Computers Control and Manipulate Opinion from Counter Culture Rising, UK-wide, 2020
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  Your Seed Atom Enters a New Body with Each Incarnation from Counter Culture Rising, UK-wide, 2020
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  Telepathic Transit Opens Between the Earth and the Moon from Counter Culture Rising, UK-wide, 2020
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  Get Ready for the Unfoldment of Super Consciousness from Counter Culture Rising, UK-wide, 2020
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  I Love You Alice B. Toklas from Counter Culture Rising, UK-wide, 2020

Internationalism

Comprendre, Chromatika, Dada 105, 100 years of surrealism, 4 tenets, woman=man, Pride 25

Beauty

But in the end, these attempts at problem solving are always secondary to the aim of creating something ‘beautiful’ in the sense that the artist himself uses that word. In a Sky Arts documentary about Firrell’s life and work, the artist was asked why his works weren’t ‘more beautiful’. Firrell replied, ‘What could be more beautiful than to try to say something about the world being more just or fairer? I can’t think of anything more exquisitely wondrous - the immense and vast beauty of justice - it’s better than all the coloured paint in the world, isn’t it?’ A similar idea was expressed in the early part of the 20th Century by the philosopher and esotericist Rudolf Steiner. Steiner is an immensely important figure in the German-speaking world and beyond (he invented ‘Steiner’ education, biodynamic farming and other practical innovations based on his philosophy of ‘spiritual science’ or Anthroposophy). Steiner tells us that the word ‘beauty’ in German ‘is connected with the word appearance, or something bright and shining’. He writes, ‘A thing of beauty comes to appearance or shines forth, that is, it shows its inner nature on the surface. This is the character of beauty, that it does not hide away but presents its inner nature in outer form.’ In German the word ‘beautiful’ (das Schoene) is related to the word ‘shining’ (das Scheinende). Steiner often refers to what he calls ‘the genius of language’ for insights into the nature of spiritual truths. Steiner maintains that ‘the beautiful shines; brings its inner nature to the surface’. According to Steiner, it is the distinguishing quality of the beautiful ‘not to hide itself, but to carry its essence into outer configuration’. This strikes me as a prescient description of the art of Martin Firrell, of its openness and apparentness as the source of both its force and its beauty in the Steinerian sense: ‘A real art... arises when one grasps the nature of appearance, of revelation, of raying forth as a living factor and makes use of this living revelation.’ Barbara Ulbrist, Basel 2020.

When questioned in the documentary 'Overthrow the Social Order' about the presence, or absence, of beauty in his artworks, Firrell answered, "I suppose everything hinges on your definition of beauty - what could be more beautiful than to try to say something about the world being more just or fairer? I can’t think of anything more exquisitely wondrous - the immense and vast beauty of justice - it’s better than all the coloured paint in the world."

Writing

Lucid Between Bouts of Sanity

The Unconstructible Machine and Other Essays

Die Chromatika / The Chromatika

Significant works

• UK Digital Billboards Union City art inspired by Clare Short, Frances O'Grady, and Satish Kumar, 2019.
• UK Digital Billboards Power and Gender digital billboards investigating the way women regard, hold and use power, created in conversation with Clare Short, Inga Beale, Alex Mahon, Annie Rickard and Liv Garfield, 2019.
• UK Digital Billboards Remember 1967 digital billboards to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act in England and Wales, 2017
• UK Digital Billboards All Identity Is Constructed text and digital video exploring the arbitrary nature of identity, 2016
• National Theatre Fires Modern digital projections of text and flame to the fly tower of the National Theatre, London, commissioned by Artichoke to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London, 2016
• St Paul's Cathedral Fires Ancient digital projections of fire to the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, London, commissioned by Artichoke to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London, 2016
• Metascifi iOS app / video portraiture / digital documentary, philosophical truths derived from popular American television science fiction, feat. Ben Browder, Nathan Fillion, Joe Flanigan, David Hewlett, Torri Higginson, Christopher Judge, Eddie McClintock, Kate Mulgrew, David Nykl et al., 2015
• It Ends Here installed text, haze, coloured light, found sound, performers / human nature or the road to redemption or hell, The Vaults, Waterloo Station, London 2014
• Metafenella interactive video portraiture / advice for living well from the life and work of British actress Fenella Fielding 2014
• Complete Hero largescale digital projections to the North and West elevations of the Guards Chapel, Birdcage Walk, London with Nathan Fillion, April Ashley, Howard Jacobson, Adam Nicolson, Johnson Beharry VC, A. C. Grayling, Wezley Sebastian, Gia Milinovich, Mo Blackwood, Shazia Mirza, Dr Adam Rutherford, Dr Jennifer Rohn, and others, 2009
• St Paul's Cathedral The Question Mark Inside commissioned by Dean and Chapter to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the topping-out of Christopher Wren's cathedral building. Digital text projections to the cathedral dome, West Front and Whispering Gallery, London 2008
• Curzon Cinemas 1968 (digital projections to mark the 40th anniversary of May 1968 for the festival All Power to the Imagination: 1968 and its Legacies) 2008
• Paul Hamlyn Foundation/Royal Opera House Power is always temporary (digital projection to the Royal Opera House main stage) 2007
• Royal Opera House It's Passion that Binds Us… (digital projection onto the Covent Garden elevation of the Royal Opera House) 2007
• Curzon Cinemas Different is not Wrong (35 mm projection, cinema screens) 2006-7
• Campaign against Climate Change How ironic to live in fear of terrorism and die because of climate change (xenon projection to St Pancras Station, Battersea Power Station and Parliament) 2006
• National Gallery, London I want to live in a city where… (digital projection onto the Trafalgar Square elevation of the National Gallery in London,
• The Guardian When the world's run by fools it's the duty of intelligence to disobey (projection onto Parliament) 2006
• Tate Britain All men are dangerous (words of wisdom projected onto the Duveen Gallery walls, commissioned by Amy Lamé for Duckie) 2006

External links

• Official page
• Catalogue Raisonné
• DrAdamLasserman/sandbox at IMDb
• metaFenella, interactive video portrait 2014