Joy Gerrard Precarious Freedom: Crowds, Flags, Barriers

“Gerrard invites us to consider movement as a collective action, a call to collective justice.” Ekow Eshun

This hard-back book explores a recent body of work and exhibition by Joy Gerrard who, drawing on over a decade of image-making and research in themes of protest and urban space, archives and painstakingly remakes media-borne crowd images. The exhibition, Precarious Freedom: Crowds, Flags, Barriers, originated at the Highlines Gallery and travelled to the Galway international Arts Festival and Butler Gallery in Ireland.

Gerrard’s subjects include climate change, Brexit, BLM protests and women’s equalities. These crowds are re-imaged in large monochrome paintings and small complex drawings made with Japanese ink. Texts by Aoife Ruane, curator and director of Highlanes Gallery; Ingrid Swenson, curator and writer; and Ekow Eshun curator and writer reflect on the depicted moments of protest and Gerrard’s expressions of collective agency, including the precarious freedom of protest.

The front cover and headings throughout the book are set in CARRIE, a typeface based on the letterforms featured on banners and placards from a march that took place in 1915 in New York when over 25,000 women marched up Fifth Avenue to advocate for women’s suffrage. The parade - the largest to be held in the city until that time - was led by skilled political strategist, suffragist, and peace activist, Carrie Chapman Catt, whose work and campaigning led to women in the U.S been given the right to vote in 1920.

Editors: Joy Gerrard and Aoife Ruane
Publisher: Highlanes Gallery, Ireland
Published: 2023