This piece is a representation of how paper books are being ‘murdered’ by the new high-tech e-books, like Kindle, Nook and Kobo. Personally I feel that we should treasure all books, as they are an escape to another world, an expression of emotions, and a break from technology and social media. However, avoiding electronic devices is becoming more difficult, as a rapidly increasing number of people use e-books. I will always prefer the smell and the feel of the crisp paper in a new novel, as I anticipate the imaginative adventure I’ll find inside that warming cover. This contrasts with the cold feeling of metal or plastic. The swiping at a glass rectangle is harsh and fast compared to the calmness of the paper being gently turned. With a bright screen burning my eyes as I lay under the covers of my bed, I miss the nostalgic, soft, yellow light from the torch on the paper. And just to think, the next generation may not understand the strange pleasure of carrying our well-thumbed textbooks to the next class, or hunting down and reserving a hardback in that old, musty book shop down the road. My mum told me recently of a book she revisited, that hadn’t been read since 2003 when I was 4. Inside was a bookmark, a letter from me, written with crayons - an authentic human creation, which you wouldn’t find in the memory of a hard drive. The name of this piece was inspired by what actually happened when I tried to cut the bullet holes through the book with a crafting knife. My knife snagged on the corner of a page, so I peeled the paper back and saw that the word I had stopped on was in fact ‘love’. The same thing happened again, but this time for ‘care’. I was starting to get a little scared, and as I cut my last wound, the knife got stuck on ‘peace’. They were all accidents that showed happy words, thus ‘The Happy Accident’. This piece is dedicated to my Grandy, who I loved and admired very much. He always loved my art, and all the words that emerged from the pages remind me of him. Thank you Grandy for inspiring me and thus helping me with this art work. Harmony Atkinson is a Year 10 student at St. Hilda’s Church of England High School.
I am a cartoonist/illustrator. My ‘Bestie’ greetings card range has been out since 1992. I also contribute regularly to Private Eye. Before this I taught Art and Art History at HMP Walton for eight years.
^ ULYSSE DI MEGLIO - PEACEFUL END OF A PROTOEST (2010)
For more than nine months this year, millions of citizens were protesting against the pension reform wanted by Sarkozy’s government. During the demonstrations a lot of young people got attacked by troublemakers, suspected to be hired by the police itself, in order to ‘break the movement’. Tensions between protesters and the police forces also have caused many injuries. But in most of the demonstrations there was a peaceful and overwhelming feeling of unity, power and sometimes peace. This photo was shot during autumn 2010 in Paris, Place de la Nation, at the end of a massive protest. The unreal light is not due to tear gas this time but to smoke sticks, traditionally used by railway workers unions.
Liverpool is a city with a distinct radical identity, informed by historical factors ranging from strong unionisation of dock workers to the more recent Families for Justice campaign. Tom George’s video piece draws on the personal testimonies of demonstrations and protesters from the city as well as the artist’s personal reflections on the changing nature of protest.
Johnson worked as a librarian for 38 years until 2011. Since that time he has been looking for interesting things to do. This has included volunteering for the Liverpool Biennial 2012. From that experience he helped set up a group that explores art through friendly and informal discussion, called Art Club, and has started to create art works. This is Johnson’s third publically displayed piece. He draws on the ideas of conceptual and contextual art. This is his second work to use coins as a primary medium. He asks “is this right?”
^ ANDY JOHNSON- IS THIS RIGHT (2013)
Istanbul, 06/07/13 Everything started with people protesting against the government who wanted to destroy the trees in the only park “Gezi” in the centre of Istanbul, in order to build a shopping mall instead. It was a very peaceful protest and people only wanted to protect the last greenery left in the city centre. On May 31th 2013 which is 3 days after the beginning of the passive protests, following orders from Prime Minister Erdogan, police started to attack people with water cannons and excessive tear gas, setting off the most significant wave of protests in Turkey’s recent history. In a very short time hundreds became thousands and after a couple of days it spread to all other cities in Turkey. How could a park create a protest on such a large scale? There are several reasons: the allegations of fraud of current government election, its recruitment policies, (it is almost confirmed that there have been frauds in the general recruitment examination for being a state employee), and in the general recruitment of police and judges in Turkey. Other reasons are Government policies regarding abortion, curbs on alcohol, women’s role in social life and gender relations, controlling the media, jailing journalists, artists, writers, military generals, who are not part of the government’s ideology. The public is hopeless about its future, and fed up of this dictatorship. People do not trust the election system, the Parliament, the judiciary system, the media, the police, and people see the government as a threat regarding Turkey’s secularism. All of these reasons triggered people to go on the streets and in the end it spread all over Turkey. During the resistance one person died from gunshot, one was beaten to death and several from other forms of violence. Thousands of people were injured and amongst them 10 people permanently blinded by teargas canisters fired by the police. During the brutal police attacks, none of the TV channels showed what was really happening, instead, they showed documentaries about penguins, (penguins with gas masks became one of the many symbols of the resistance), or entertainment programmes, because the media was pressured by the government. My piece “Building the Future” is a selection of the photos that I’ve taken to create the public awareness of what was really happening when I went to Turkey to support the resistance. The photos show police violence, the reaction of people and protesters’ resistance, amongst them there are so many young protesters risking their life and by doing that actually building their own future.
^ LIRIYA LEE- BUILDING THE FUTURE (2013)
This is a visual interpretation of my experience of having my own dog neutered and the associated behavioural change I saw in him (calmerless excitable, less erratic and less aggressive). The piece depicts David Cameron and Barrack Obama, heads atop dogs’ bodies, literally having their testicles surgically removed in order that the world can be a happier, less violent place without Western aggression. There are references in the background to current US/UK aggression (US drones, ominously looming overhead in formation reminiscent of Nazi Luftwaffe in the Blitz over London), and at bottom, Cameron’s Trident nuclear submarines, which he and his party are committed to replacing likefor-like at the end of their current life-span
Made in response to the presence of police ‘evidence gatherers’, collecting video surveillance information at a peaceful protest march in Liverpool on 05/02/2011 - despite no crime having been committed - and prophetic of recent revelations in the UK and around the world regarding oppressive police and state surveillance operations. Posted and displayed in and around Liverpool, UK.
^ WINSTON LUDD- NEUTERED (2013)
The history of oppression is often the history of divide and conquer; an isolated group is easier to control. Resistance can be sometimes facilitated by sharing information and ideas. It seems to me that this was often done in the past by basic forms of print making, both in image and in text which could be repeatedly produced and shared to spread an idea. Such ideas may be subversive ones and there is a history of this. This set of work is a series called “The people said “No!” which is a set of small tributes to the revolutionary groups which exemplified our history of defiance and protest against injustice and greed. Shown here are prints for the Luddites, for the Diggers and for the Saboteurs. The language consciously references Soviet agit-prop images.
The work shown here regards the history of oppression LGBT people have recurrently faced by authorities often seeking to justify homophobia on religious grounds. Many LGBT people feel that they must decide between being gay and having a religious identity. In LGBT History Month I feel justified in reclaiming religious symbols to question this often extremely brutal and divisive oppression. In protest I will make pilgrimages to sites of LGBT importance, I will canonize who I chose as saints and I will commemorate martyrs and heroes like Harvey Milk, Peter Tatchel and Nikolay Alexeyev.
^ TONY O’CONNELL- THE PEOPLE SAID “NO!” (2014)
It’s Our War is a comment on the future of Britain’s artistic success being under threat. In the past year we have seen governments attempt to devalue the arts, but in doing so have encouraged artists and cultural enthusiasts to unite and remind society of the values art encourages. Since Michael Gove and the coalition government have set in place policies marginalising the arts and restricting access to arts courses to children, artists have stood up in a series of protests and debates showcasing how the expressive arts are crucial to our nation, identity and economy. In November 2013 Bob and Roberta Smith arranged the Art Party Conference in Scarborough, bringing together 1,200 art enthusiasts to discuss the future of art and the benefits it has on society. Following the conference Bob and Roberta Smith commented, “The arts make people powerful because art and design is about creating new desires…Art makes people powerful because art is about our freedom of expression.” After the Second World War, in the 1960s, it was dynamic developments in the economy, design and the arts that gave new groups power. It’s Our War is a reminder that creativity is pivotal to creating change, and reflects on the need for artists to unite and collaborate to strengthen the future of the arts in Britain.
^ BECKY PEACH- IT’S OUR WAR (2014)
On 10 November 2013, Pyotr Pavlensky, a Russian performance artist, sat naked for an hour and a half in Moscow’s Red Square with a nail driven through his scrotum into the ground before he was removed by police. He said the performance was a metaphor for “apathy, political indifference and fatalism in modern Russian society”. My piece *Beautiful Square, in homage to Pavlensky, shows a picture of his action, surrounded by pictures of other activists who have displayed their naked bodies during their protests, fixed to the square by single nails.
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Come then, ye generous few, whose hearts can feel For stranger sorrows; who can hear the voice Of misery breathe across th’Atlantic main, Diminish’d not by distance! Ye too come, Ye patrons of distress, beneath whose smile Exulting charity beholds with joy The numerous temples rising to her fame; Where age in peace reposes, where the young A safe asylum find; where sickness smiles, And hunger meets relief! Come, and with me Descend that floating dungeon’s dark recess, To air scarce pervious; where in numbers pil’d, And closely wedg’d within the scanty breadth Of calculated inches, pass their hours The victims of our avarice. William Roscoe, The Wrongs of Africa, 1787
^ NICOLA ROSCOE-CALVERT- SEEDS OF DISCORD (2014)
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF KEVIN NEWBOLD