Rachael House joins flyingleaps
Genderqueer Human Rights Deity, 2020
Rachael House is a very busy bee who makes events, objects, performance, drawings and zines. Currently on sabbatical from her role as co-director of Space Station Sixty-Five – an artists’ run space in Kennington, London, established in 2002 – she has made well over a hundred drawings in lockdown.
These monochromatic brush and ink works are graphically bold, inventively patterned and freshly rendered figurative images paired with hand lettered, pithy texts. More often ranging across two or four square panels, House addresses a spectrum of issues that also speak to the wider UK society and latterly our pandemic psyche. There’s also more directly political expressions in support of sacked South Bank workers and the Tate strike; animal rights; the Tory government’s malfeasance and incompetence as well as the Labour centrist betrayal of progressive politics. She doesn’t mince her words.
In more personal pieces there’s a tenderness and vulnerability that leavens the obvious exasperation. Subjects tackled include: the disabling effect of rolling news on her mental health where her visualisation captures that sense of being under siege many of us are feeling;
House’s disgruntlement at blokey, meaty BBQs might be a niche grumble but she makes a good case; her admitting to iffy balance and flawed sense of direction and plea for more open top buses is comical and relatable; the difficulties posed by having to wear glasses, hat and face masks at the same time as the weather gets colder is spot on.
With her debut flyingleaps poster House is emphasising that human rights include trans rights and genderqueer positivity. Displayed on the streets to coincide with International Human Rights Day on December 10th, House’s Genderqueer Human Rights Deity (2020) is one of a series of captivating single panel works that feature an ouroboros – a snake devouring its own tail – symbolising the endless cycle of life, death and rebirth. The sloughing of skin suggests the transmigration of souls and the tail biting snake is also a symbol of fertility.
In the void of the snake circle House has created variously serene, always arresting faces made up of ancient glyphs, signs and figurative details. Patterned textures and further protective motifs in the design afford a distinctive character to the works so that while they all rail against assorted injustices each has its own particular expression. There’s an owl-like Minerva, goddess of wisdom, quality to them that suggests a measured, calm, righteous questioning rather than aggressive confrontation. A thoughtful approach that is something of a breath of fresh air in these febrile times.
On the Street
Oh ‘Ello (2020) Magda Archer
In Archer’s ‘Oh ’Ello…’ (2020) a shiny, somewhat raw ‘n’ sore looking red bear opines wearily “More New Rules”, with the rollercoaster line ‘Here We Go!’ completing the picture. Kays’ ‘Tories’ (2020) writ large in a font and design that brings to mind a certain supermarket giant beginning with the letter ‘T’ is tagged underneath in a chirpy script… ‘Very Little Help’.
Tories (2020) Hayden Kays
Whereas Tesco might claim a smidgen of benificence while pocketing soaring profits the same cannot be said for our government. While MPs got a pay rise, key workers and the creative industries have been very poorly served throughout. And how on earth do you justify not ensuring hungry kids get at least one meal and day in the holidays? You don’t. They’re not even bothering to hide their malice but respond only with that oh-so-trite line about not letting people become ‘dependent on the state’. Dido Harding and the rest benefitting from dodgy procurements seem to be doing alright. If only the Tories were dealing with this pandemic as expertly as they’re delivering Brex… Oh.
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Dr.D aka Subvertiser
While the debate goes on as to whether flyposted and other oppositional art or visual activism has any direct effect in bringing about sociopolitical change, what it can do at its best is feed into the publics’ disposition.
Through strong imagery, cogent or quizzical text, humour, relatively speedy production and distribution, via its capacity to occupy anomalous spaces in the urban environment and through an imaginative, enacted engagement with matters of concern it can generate social media interest and help inform, even propel, opinion.
Dr. D’s targets include surveillance culture; the social effects of neoliberalism; commodification; mealy-mouthed and uncaring politicians; abuses of power in the media… Much more than bald sloganeering Dr. D’s imagery and text pieces often emerge, on reflection, as enigmatic meditations on twenty-first century existential angst.
Transgressing boundaries can reveal hidden rules. One could cite the precedents of the carnivalesque ‘telling truth to power’, vaudevillian comedy, Dada gestures in art but all of these, in a – it’s only a bunch of pucks/entertainers/artists – sense, operated in ‘sanctioned’ arenas. Dr. D’s contributions to the urban environment are rarely sanctioned and it’s this that contributes significantly to their traction and incisiveness.
The urban spectacle would have us believe that its over-riding character is, yes aspirational, but emphatically neutral and apolitical: that generally we’re going to be just fine if we carry on pretty much as we are. Dr. D’s pithy interventions, highlighting so many germane issues and employing such a variety of modes of address, repeatedly suggest otherwise.
