A NEW STUDY of the life and creativity of Gee Vaucher, the artist, illustrator and filmmaker most widely recognised for her work as part of Crass, is to be published in November 2022.
Developed from the research for her doctoral thesis, Rebecca Binn’s Gee Vaucher: Beyond punk, feminism and the avant-garde will be published by Manchester University Press in both hardback and paperback editions.
As one of the people who defined punk’s protest art in the 1970s and 1980s, Gee Vaucher (b. 1945) deserves to be much better-known. She produced confrontational album covers for the legendary anarchist band Crass and later went on to do the same for Northern indie legends the Charlatans, among others. More recently, her work was recognised the day after Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory, when the front page of the Daily Mirror ran her 1989 painting Oh America, which shows the Statue of Liberty, head in hands.
This is the first book to critically assess an extensive range of Vaucher’s work. It examines her unique position connecting avant-garde art movements, counterculture, punk and even contemporary street art. While Vaucher rejects all ‘isms’, her work offers a unique take on the history of feminist art. The book explores how her life has shaped her output, with particular focus on the open-house collective at Dial House in Essex, a centre for radical creativity.
Manchester University Press
Rebecca Binns. 2022. Gee Vaucher: Beyond punk, feminism and the avant-garde. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN: 9781526147899. [MUP listing]
Introduction
Manchester University Press
1 The changing face of British arts, politics and culture during Vaucher’s art school years
2 Radical art collectives and the free festivals movement
3 New York, political photomontage and the underground press
4 Towards the definition of a punk aesthetic
5 Crass art and the birth of anarcho-punk
6 Post-punk, hardcore, and the dissolution of the dream
7 Post Crass introspection: postmodernism and the anti-rationalist avant-garde
8 Beyond the art world: political agitation and public intervention in the new millennium
Index
The Hippies Now Wear Black 