Protest Shows and Art
The Stuckists have made use of their art shows in order also to promote a message. The name of the group itself is an ironic pre-emptive riposte to their anticipated enemies—as represented in the first instance by former colleague-turned-YBA, Tracey Emin, who had called the group's co-founder, Billy Childish, "stuck". The group's first show in 1999 was titled, Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!. In 2000, they made an overt challenge with a show titled, The Resignation of Sir Nicholas Serota. A painting in the show, Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision by Charles Thomson, has since been reproduced in the media many times and become an iconic image for the Stuckists.
In 2005, another show was called: "Painting Is the Medium of Yesterday"—Paul Myners CBE, Chairman of Tate Gallery, Chairman of Marks and Spencer, Chairman of Aspen Insurance, Chairman of Guardian Media, Director of Bank of England, Director of Bank of New York. A Show of Paintings by the Stuckists, as Refused by the Tate Gallery. Guaranteed 100% Free of Elephant Dung.
The Stuckists Punk Victorian exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery during the 2004 Liverpool Biennial including a free-standing screen with paintings attacking the Turner Prize and the Tate gallery.
Michael Dickinson has exhibited political and satirical collages, addressing the Iraq War and world leaders, particularly US President George W. Bush. In 2006 he was told he faced prosecution in Turkey, where he lives, for his collage Best in Show, showing the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan as a dog. He was subsequently prosecuted for a similar collage, Good Boy, and acquitted in a case that had implications for Turkey's application for membership of the European Union.
Read more about this topic: Stuckist Demonstrations
Famous quotes containing the words protest, shows and/or art:
“To exist is equivalent to an act of faith, a protest against the truth, an interminable prayer.... As soon as they consent to live, the unbeliever and the man of faith are fundamentally the same, since both have made the only decision that defines a being.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)
“Our Last Will and Testament, providing for the only future of which we can be reasonably certain, namely our own death, shows that the Will’s need to will is no less strong than Reason’s need to think; in both instances the mind transcends its own natural limitations, either by asking unanswerable questions or by projecting itself into a future which, for the willing subject, will never be.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“An aphorism, honestly stamped and molded, has not yet been “deciphered” once we have read it over; rather, its exegesis—for which an art of exegesis is needed—has only just begun.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)