Joy Gerrard: Image as Protest
Working in ink, Joy Gerrard painstakingly recreates images sourced from the media of political demonstrations from around the world. The first two works are renderings of a helicopter view of a protest that happened in central London in March 2021. The protest was a reaction to a vigil, that was shut down, for Sarah Everard, a young woman who was kidnapped and murdered by a serving police officer in London.
The next two drawings depict huge protest crowds that gathered in 2020, in Warsaw, to oppose anti-abortion laws that have brought a near-total ban on abortion in Poland. Focusing on the rights and equality of women, Gerrard is interested in how people attempt to make their opposition to an event, or a law, or a political change, visible in the public realm. She explores different visual ways to record the protest.
Gerrard chooses to work in monochrome, using a hand ground sumi ink. She washes the colour away from the scene, so that it becomes more graphic, encouraging a more emotionally potent response in the viewer. Gerrard comments; “The final state of all these images exists in the eye of the viewer, in how they are received and looked at. Some will see a street scene; others will maybe see a representation of resistance. The image is ephemeral; it was real, but floats through time, materials and optics, never really belonging to any of us.”
Over the last decade Gerrard has worked in drawing, painting and multimedia to make art that explores the new era of mass protest in Europe and the US. Recent projects have also included Brexit, the climate crisis and anti-Trump demonstrations as well as Black Lives Matter marches.
Please view the drawings below and contact [email protected] if you require any further information or would like to view the works at the gallery.
1.
Ink on paper mounted on aluminium
38 x 25cm
Below: Work in progress for Vigil Protest, New Scotland Yard, London 14th March 2021 (Version 1)
2.
Ink on paper mounted on aluminium
38 x 25cm
Below: Work in progress for VigilProtest, New Scotland Yard, London 14th March 2021 (Version 2)
3.
Ink on paper mounted on aluminium
38 x 25cm
Below: Joy Gerrard's Studio
4.
Ink on paper mounted on aluminium
38 x 25cm
Below: Work in progress for Women’s Strike, Warsaw. Poland, October, 2020
