Gee Vaucher | |
|---|---|
 Penny Rimbaud and Gee Vaucher photographed by Graham Burnett, 2002 | |
| Born | 1945 (age 78–79) |
| Nationality | English |
| Movement | Anarchism and protest-art |
Gee Vaucher (born 1945 in Dagenham, Essex, England [1] ) is a visual artist primarily associated with the anarcho-punk band Crass.
Vaucher met her long-lasting creative partner Penny Rimbaud in the early 1960s when both were attending the South-East Essex Technical College and School of Art. [1] In 1967, inspired by the film Inn of the Sixth Happiness , [2] they set up the anarchist/pacifist open house Dial House in Essex, UK, which has now become firmly established as a 'centre for radical creativity'.
In 2016, Vaucher was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex. [3]
Vaucher is vegetarian. [4]
Her work with anarcho-punk band Crass was seminal to the 'protest art' of the 1980s. Vaucher has always seen her work as a tool for social change, and has expressed her strong anarcho-pacifist and feminist views in her paintings and collages. [1] Vaucher also uses surrealist styles and methods.
She continues to design sleeves for Babel Label, and also designed the sleeve for The Charlatans' Who We Touch album. [5] Vaucher has exhibited at the 96 Gillespie gallery in London. In 2007 and 2008 the Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco and Track 16 in Santa Monica ran exhibitions entitled "Gee Vaucher: Introspective", showing a wide selection of Vaucher's work.
The day after Donald Trump's election victory in November 2016, the British Daily Mirror newspaper featured Vaucher's 1989 painting Oh America on its front page. [6] [7]
In the foreword to her first book, a 1999 retrospective collection entitled Crass Art and Other Pre Post-Modernist Monsters, Ian Dury writes:
"In its original form, Gee's work is intricate and tactile, and while the imagery is sometimes almost overwhelming, the primary concerns are those of a painter; dealing with form and space. Mere newsprint would hardly do justice to its subtle tones. When the work is printed, the space becomes more simple and the graphic images take on a different life. The concerns are those of delivery, and the message is clear."
In her second book, Animal Rites: a pictorial study of relationships, she gives a commentary on the relationship between animals and humans, centered on the quote "All humans are animals, but some animals are more human than others."
Vaucher's film Gower Boy, made in collaboration with pianist Huw Warren, debuted at the 14th Raindance Film Festival in London in October 2006. [8]
Dial House is a farm cottage situated in south-west Essex, England that has been a self-sustaining anarcho-pacifist open house since 1967. The house is located in the countryside of Epping Forest in Ongar Great Park. It has been used as a base for a number of cultural, artistic, and political projects ranging from avant-garde jazz events to helping found the free festival movement.
Anarcho-punk is an ideological subgenre of punk rock that promotes anarchism. Some use the term broadly to refer to any punk music with anarchist lyrical content, which may figure in crust punk, hardcore punk, folk punk, and other styles.
The Feeding of the 5000 is the first album by the anarcho-punk band Crass. The album was recorded on 29 October 1978 by John Loder at Southern Studios and was released the same year. It was considered revolutionary in its time due for its extreme sound, frequently profane lyrical content and the anarchist political ideals in the lyrics. The album also saw the introduction of Crass's policy of ensuring cheap prices for their records. The album is considered as one of the first punk albums to expound serious anarchist philosophy.
Stations of the Crass is the second album by Crass, released in 1979. The record, originally released as a double 12", includes live tracks from a gig recorded at the Pied Bull pub in Islington, London, on 7 August 1979. The first three sides contain the studio tracks and play at 45 rpm, while the final side comprises the live material and plays at 33 rpm. The album's title is not only a pun on the Catholic rite of the Stations of the Cross, but is also a reference to the graffiti campaign that the band had been conducting around London's underground railway system, the cover artwork depicting a wall at Bond Street tube station that had allegedly been 'decorated' by them. Although the album met mixed critical reception at first, it managed to sell at least 20,000 copies within two weeks.
Crass Records was an independent record label that was set up by the anarchist punk band Crass.
Yes Sir, I Will was the fifth and penultimate album released in March 1983 by anarcho-punk band Crass. The album is a virulent attack on then-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher and her government in the aftermath of the Falklands War and was set nearly wholly over a raging and an almost free-form improvised backing provided by the group's musicians.
Steve Ignorant is a singer and artist.
Penny Lapsang Rimbaud is a writer, poet, philosopher, painter, musician and activist. He was a member of the performance art groups EXIT and Ceres Confusion, and in 1972 was co-founder of the Stonehenge Free Festival, together with Phil Russell aka Wally Hope. In 1977 with Steve Ignorant, he co-founded the seminal anarchist punk band Crass and served as its drummer. Crass disbanded in 1984. Until 2000 Rimbaud devoted himself almost entirely to writing, returning to the public platform in 2001 as a performance poet working with Australian saxophonist Louise Elliott and a wide variety of jazz musicians under the umbrella of Last Amendment.
Penis Envy, released in 1981, was the third LP by the anarchist punk band Crass. The album was included at #36 on Rolling Stone's "40 Greatest Punk Albums of All Time" list in 2016.
Christ – The Album is the fourth album by Crass, released in 1982. It was released as a boxed-set, double-vinyl LP package, including one disc of new studio material and another, entitled Well Forked.. But Not Dead, a live recording of the band's June 1981 gig at the 100 Club in London along with other studio tracks, demos and tape fragments. The box also included a book, A Series of Shock Slogans and Mindless Token Tantrums, and a large poster painted by Gee Vaucher. The album was well received and the band considered it their best.
EXIT were a performance art group during the mid-1970s. EXIT members Penny Rimbaud and Gee Vaucher later founded anarchist punk rock band Crass, adopting many of EXIT's experimental/multi media techniques into Crass' presentation.
Last Amendment, formerly known as The Crass Collective and Crass Agenda, is the working title of a series of collaborations by ex-members of the anarcho-punk band Crass and others. Although Crass had formally split up in 1984, Penny Rimbaud, Gee Vaucher, Eve Libertine, Steve Ignorant, Andy Palmer and Pete Wright came together in November 2002 to put on a concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in opposition to the at that time proposed War on Iraq. Although they did not all appear on the stage at the same time, most of the ex-members of Crass participated in the event under the name of The Crass Collective, along with other performers such as Ian MacKaye, Goldblade, the English Chamber Choir, Fun Da Mental, and Nabil Shaban, among others.
Eve Libertine is an English singer.
Stop the City demonstrations of 1983 and 1984 were billed as a 'Carnival Against War, Oppression and Destruction', in other words protests against the military-financial complex. These demonstrations can be seen as the forerunner of the anti-globalisation protests of the 1990s, especially those in London, England, on May Day and the Carnival against Capitalism on 18 June 1999. They were partially inspired by the actions of the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp.
Girlfriend in a Kimono is a short film shot in the summer of 2005, written and directed by Dominic Thackray who describes it as an anti-romance. Named after the 1987 song Girlfriend in a Coma by the Smiths, it tells the tale of autoslacker Vincent who falls for French burlesque dancer Candice, and who finds that consensus reality is unable to help him explain her lack of engagement. With most roles played by first-time actors it also features Penny Rimbaud as the enigmatic Rimbaud and Shizuka Hata in two roles. The film's score is by Hey Is Dee Dee (Ramone) Home producer Ronni Raygun Thomas, and there is additional music from Saint Etienne, Crass and Talulah Gosh. It was produced by former Raindance producer Oli Harbottle and former East End Film Festival producer Rachael Castell.
Crass were an English art collective and punk rock band formed in Epping, Essex in 1977 who promoted anarchism as a political ideology, a lifestyle and a resistance movement. Crass popularised the anarcho-punk movement of the punk subculture, advocating direct action, animal rights, feminism, anti-fascism and environmentalism. The band employed and advocated a DIY ethic in its albums, sound collages, leaflets and films.
There is No Authority But Yourself is a Dutch film directed by Alexander Oey documenting the history of anarchist punk band Crass. The film features archive footage of the band and interviews with former members Steve Ignorant, Penny Rimbaud and Gee Vaucher. As well as reflecting on the band's past the film focusses on their current activities, and includes footage of Rimbaud performing with Last Amendment at the Vortex jazz club in Hackney, a compost toilet building workshop and a permaculture course held at Dial House in the spring of 2006.
This is Your Captain Speaking is a three-track EP by English musician Captain Sensible, released on 2 November 1981 on Crass Records. It was Sensible's first release as a solo artist, while still being a member of rock band the Damned. It reached No. 3 in the UK Indie Chart.
David Anthony King (1948–2019) was an English American artist, (graphic) designer, and musician, a "significant figure in design history" best known as the designer of the symbol for the band Crass, "one of punk’s most recognizable and powerful designs".
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