Gee Vaucher: Beyond punk, feminism and the avant-garde

By Rebecca Binns

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: Nov 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781526147905

Book preview

Gee Vaucher

ffirs01-fig-5001.jpg

Gee Vaucher

Beyond punk, feminism and the avant-garde

Rebecca Binns

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Rebecca Binns 2022

The right of Rebecca Binns to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 4789 9 hardback

ISBN 978 1 5261 4791 2 paperback

First published 2022

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Image credit: Gee Vaucher, self-portrait

from Animal Rites, 2003. © Gee Vaucher.

Typeset

by New Best-set Typesetters Ltd

Table of contents

List of figures

List of plates

Acknowledgements

Introduction

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

Select bibliography

Index

List of figures

1.1 Gee Vaucher, Ideal Home, International Anthem 5: War, 1983, collage, 410mm × 310mm (© Gee Vaucher)

1.2 Gee Vaucher, Cover for the first Crass album, Feeding of the Five Thousand (1978), gouache, 260mm × 260mm (© Gee Vaucher)

1.3 Gee Vaucher, Cover for International Anthem 1: Education, 1977, collage, 420mm × 300mm (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Russ Bestley)

1.4 Anon, Gee Vaucher, wearing a pinstripe smock, age four, 1949, photo (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Christian Brett)

1.5 Anon, Gee Vaucher at art school, 1964, photo (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Christian Brett)

1.6 Gee Vaucher, Self-portrait, 1963, pencil (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Christian Brett)

1.7 Gee Vaucher, Life drawing, 1964, pencil, 390mm × 300mm (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Christian Brett)

1.8 Gee Vaucher, Life drawing, 1965, pencil, 370mm × 260mm (© Gee Vaucher)

1.9 Gee Vaucher, Bus, 1964, drawing, 250mm × 455mm (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Christian Brett)

2.1 Gee Vaucher, Poster for ICES 72, 1972, gouache, 600mm × 400mm (© Gee Vaucher)

2.2 EXIT performance featuring Vaucher and Rimbaud, Wrap Piece, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1973, photo (© Gee Vaucher)

2.3 Stonehenge Flyer, front, 1974 (© unknown, reproduced with the permission of the Wally Society)

2.4 Gee Vaucher, A Homage to Catatonia, 1975, gouache, 180mm × 170mm (© Gee Vaucher)

2.5 Gee Vaucher, A Homage to Catatonia, 1975, gouache, 180mm × 170mm (© Gee Vaucher)

2.6 Gee Vaucher, A Homage to Catatonia, 1975, gouache, 180mm × 170mm (© Gee Vaucher)

3.1 Gee Vaucher, Illustration for Ace of Diamonds, 1974, gouache, 210mm × 130mm (© Gee Vaucher)

3.2 Gee Vaucher, ‘An impression by Carole Vaucher of a surprise party given American visitors by their English hosts’. Illustration for New York Times, 8 June 1977 (© Gee Vaucher)

3.3 Gee Vaucher, illustration for book review on Watergate, New York Magazine, 1977, gouache, 240mm × 80mm (© Gee Vaucher)

3.4 Cover, International Times, Issue 11, 21 April 1967 (© Gee Vaucher)

3.5 Gee Vaucher, Illustration for Pent-Up magazine, 1975, gouache (colour), 190mm × 190mm (© Gee Vaucher)

3.6 Gee Vaucher, Illustration for International Anthem 1: Education, 1977, gouache, 210mm × 200mm (© Gee Vaucher)

3.7 Gee Vaucher, Illustration for International Anthem 1: Education, 1977, collage (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Russ Bestley)

4.1 Gee Vaucher, Illustration for International Anthem 1: Education, 1977, collage 420mm × 300mm (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Russ Bestley)

4.2 Gee Vaucher, Illustration for International Anthem 1: Education, 1977, gouache, 230mm × 230mm (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Russ Bestley)

4.3 Linder Sterling, Untitled in The Secret Public, 1978, photomontage, 271mm × 195 mm (© Linder Sterling, reproduced with the permission of England's Dreaming: Jon Savage Archive at Liverpool John Moores University Special Collections & Archives)

4.4 Hannah Höch, Da Da Dandy, 1919, collage (© DACS 2022)

4.5 Gee Vaucher, Illustration for International Anthem 2: Domestic Violence, 1979, collage (reproduced with the permission of the ©, Gee Vaucher and archive holder Russ Bestley)

4.6 Gee Vaucher, Illustration, International Anthem 2: Domestic Violence, 1979, collage (reproduced with the permission of the ©, Gee Vaucher and archive holder Russ Bestley)

4.7 Gee Vaucher, Illustration for International Anthem 2: Domestic Violence, 1979, gouache (reproduced with the permission of the ©, Gee Vaucher and archive holder Russ Bestley)

4.8 Gee Vaucher, Illustration for International Anthem 2: Domestic Violence, 1979, collage, 540mm × 350mm (reproduced with the permission of the © Gee Vaucher and archive holder Russ Bestley)

5.1 Crass Label 7" Single Covers (reproduced with the permission of the © Crass, and archive holder, Russ Bestley)

5.2 Crass, Illustration on first inside flap to Crass’ album, The Feeding of the 5000 (Second Sitting), Crass Records, 1981 (reproduced with the permission of the © Crass, and archive holder, Alistair Gordon)

5.3 Gee Vaucher, Fold-out poster for Crass/Poison Girls 7" single, ‘Bloody Revolutions’/‘Persons Unknown’, Crass Records, 1980, gouache, 430mm × 290mm (© Gee Vaucher)

5.4 Gee Vaucher, Poster for Crass’ single ‘Reality Asylum’, Crass Records, 1979, gouache with collaged frame, 300mm × 240mm (© Gee Vaucher)

5.5 Gee Vaucher, Inside illustration for Crass’ album, Penis Envy, Crass Records, 1981, collage and ink, 290mm × 210mm (© Gee Vaucher)

5.6 Penny Rimbaud, Illustration for International Anthem 3: Deception and Perception, 1980, collage (© Penny Rimbaud)

6.1 Gee Vaucher, Illustration for the Crass 7" single, ‘Nagasaki Nightmare’/‘Big A, Little A’, Crass Records, 1980, gouache and collage, 320mm × 210mm (© Gee Vaucher)

6.2 Gee Vaucher, Illustration for International Anthem 3: Deception and Perception, 1980, gouache (© Gee Vaucher)

6.3 Gee Vaucher, Illustration for International Anthem 4: Northern Ireland, 1981, gouache (© Gee Vaucher)

6.4 Gee Vaucher, Fold-out poster, Crass album, Feeding of the 5000 (Second Sitting), Crass Records, 1981 (© Gee Vaucher).

6.5 Gee Vaucher, Fold-out poster, Crass 7" single, ‘How Does it Feel?’/‘The Immortal Death’, Crass Records, 1982, collage (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Ana Raposa)

6.6 Anon, Know your Enemy, 1970

6.7 Cover, Crass album, Yes Sir I Will, 1983, collage, 320mm × 250mm (© Gee Vaucher)

6.8 Gee Vaucher, Fold-out poster, Crass’ album, Yes Sir I Will, Crass Records, 1983 (© Crass, reproduced with permission of Alistair Gordon)

6.9 Acts of Defiance, No. 6, 1983 (© Russ Dunbar, reproduced with permission of Matt Worley)

6.10 Gee Vaucher, Insert, Crass 7" single, ‘You're Already Dead’, Crass Records, 1984, gouache (© Gee Vaucher)

6.11 Various punk and anarcho-punk record sleeves, 1982–84

6.12 Insert, Subhumans 7" EP, Rats, Bluurg Records (Fish 10), 1984 (© Nick Lant, reproduced with permission of Alistair Gordon)

6.13 Front and rear covers, Crucifix LP, Dehumanisation, 1983 (reproduced with permission of Alistair Gordon)

6.14 Winston Smith, Fallout Productions and Biafra, Fallout, No. 4, 1981 (© Winston Smith, reproduced with permission of Russ Bestley)

6.15 Winston Smith, Fallout Productions and Biafra, Let Them Eat Jellybeans, compilation LP, Alternative Tentacles, 1981 (© Winston Smith, reproduced with permission of Russ Bestley)

6.16 Winston Smith, Fallout Productions and Biafra, Fallout, No 4, 1981 (© Winston Smith, reproduced with permission of Russ Bestley)

6.17 Mike Coles, Album cover, Killing Joke, Killing Joke, Malicious Damage, 1980 (© Mike Coles, reproduced with permission of Russ Bestley)

7.1 Gee Vaucher, Illustration, Acts of Love, 1972, collage and ink, 123mm × 100mm (© Gee Vaucher)

7.2 Gee Vaucher, Untitled, 1991, pen and ink, 530mm × 390mm (© Gee Vaucher)

7.3 Gee Vaucher, Bride, 1992, transfer print, 320mm × 390mm (© Gee Vaucher)

7.4 Gee Vaucher, 1st Station of the Cross – Suffer Little Children from Much Ado About Something: A Play of Metaphors, 1996 (© Gee Vaucher)

7.5 Gee Vaucher, unpublished series for R. D. Laing's Knots, 1997, pencil and collage, 380mm × 340mm (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Christian Brett)

7.6 Gee Vaucher, Icons, 1997–ongoing, transfer prints (© Gee Vaucher)

7.7 Gee Vaucher, Self-portrait, 1994, pastels, 310mm × 230mm (© Gee Vaucher)

7.8 Gee Vaucher, See No Evil, Speak No Evil, 1997, 3 × collage, 420mm × 530mm (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Christian Brett)

8.1 Gee Vaucher, and Christian Brett, The Sound of Stones in the Glasshouse, installed at 96 Gillespie Gallery, London, 2006 (© Gee Vaucher and Christian Brett, reproduced with permission of Douglas Atfield)

8.2 Gee Vaucher, Israeli Soldiers, collage, 2008 (© Gee Vaucher)

8.3 Gee Vaucher, Al-Nakbah, collage, 2008 (© Gee Vaucher)

8.4 Gee Vaucher, 60 Years of Israel in Palestine, collage, 2008 (© Gee Vaucher)

8.5 Gee Vaucher, Pietà, 2010, collage, 297mm × 200mm (© Gee Vaucher)

8.6 Gee Vaucher, Dictator, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 640mm × 535mm (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Christian Brett)

8.7 Gee Vaucher, Illustration for the Animal Rites series, 2003, collage (© Gee Vaucher)

8.8 Gee Vaucher, Still from the film, Angel, 2012 (© Gee Vaucher)

8.9 Gee Vaucher, Colour poster for the 20th Raindance film festival, 2012, collage (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Dominic Thackray)

8.10 Gee Vaucher's illustrations at Firstsite, 2016 (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Douglas Atfield)

8.11 Gee Vaucher, Oh America! featured on cover of the Daily Mirror, Shock Election Issue, Thursday, 10 November 2016, gouache, 230mm × 230mm (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Mirrorpix)

List of plates

Plate 1 Gee Vaucher, Illustration, 1963, lithography and etching, 410mm × 260mm (© Gee Vaucher)

Plate 2 Gee Vaucher, Bee Gees Record Review, Rolling Stone, 1997, watercolour, gouache and collage, 240mm × 130mm (© Gee Vaucher)

Plate 3 Gee Vaucher, Illustration for Pent-Up, 1975, gouache, 250mm × 240mm (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Christian Brett)

Plate 4 Gee Vaucher, Untitled Collage, International Anthem 2: Domestic Violence, 1979, 340mm × 270mm (reproduced with the permission of the ©, Gee Vaucher and archive holder Russ Bestley)

Plate 5 Gee Vaucher, Untitled Collage, International Anthem 2: Domestic Violence, 1979, 270mm × 250mm (© Gee Vaucher)

Plate 6 Gee Vaucher, Fold-out poster for Crass album, Stations of the Crass, 1979, collage, 820mm × 580mm (© Gee Vaucher)

Plate 7 Gee Vaucher, Untitled Collage, International Anthem 3: Deception and Perception, 1980, collage, 280mm × 210mm (© Gee Vaucher)

Plate 8 Gee Vaucher, Still Life with Nude, International Anthem 5: War, 1983, collage (© Gee Vaucher)

Plate 9 Gee Vaucher, Cover, Crass album, Best Before 1984, 1986, gouache, 220mm × 210mm (© Gee Vaucher)

Plate 10 Gee Vaucher, Hetty, 1995, pastel, 1330mm × 1140mm (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Christian Brett)

Plate 11 Gee Vaucher, Untitled, 1993, photographs and oil paint, 150mm × 100mm (© Gee Vaucher)

Plate 12 Gee Vaucher, Untitled, 1992, gouache, 540mm × 420mm (© Gee Vaucher)

Plate 13 Gee Vaucher, Pastel Drawing, 1994 (© Gee Vaucher)

Plate 14 Gee Vaucher, Untitled, 1996, coloured pencil drawings, 330mm × 260mm (© Gee Vaucher, reproduced with permission of Christian Brett)

Plate 15 Gee Vaucher, Cow, 1997, oil paint, acrylic and wax crayon on canvas (© Gee Vaucher)

Plate 16 Gee Vaucher, Bull, 1997, oil paint, acrylic and wax crayon on canvas (© Gee Vaucher)

Plate 17 Gee Vaucher, Great Scott, 2008, colour screen-print, 550mm × 620mm (© Gee Vaucher)

Plate 18 Gee Vaucher, Children Who Have Seen Too Much Too Soon, 2006–16, oil painting, 7ft square (approx.) (© Gee Vaucher)

Plate 19 Gee Vaucher, Children Who Have Seen Too Much Too Soon, 2006–16, oil painting, 7ft square (approx.) (© Gee Vaucher)

Acknowledgements

There are many people I need to thank for supporting me to complete this monograph. Firstly, I would like to thank my editor, Emma Brennan at Manchester University Press, for her enthusiasm and flexibility, as well as the support she has shown throughout the writing process. I'm also grateful for the insightful and knowledgeable feedback that I received from reviewers at the proposal stage, who helped me to see that this book was not just a shot in the dark, and that it would make a significant contribution to art, cultural and political histories; or rather herstories. I'm also thankful for the support, advice and encouragement I've received from Dr Russ Bestley and Professor Matt Worley since I began this project, and for the input I've received from Tony Credland, Professor Lucy Robinson, Professor Roger Sabin and Dr Ian Horton.

I'm especially appreciative of Gee Vaucher's generosity in granting me access to an archive of her original work, and with her time. Throughout the eight-year period that this book has taken shape, aside from providing several in depth interviews, I've benefitted from the more informal opportunities I've had to experience her living and working environment, at Dial House and further afield. Despite her prolific output, hectic exhibition schedule and the intense demands of life at Dial House, she has never failed to make time, for which I'm hugely appreciative. I'm likewise thankful for Penny Rimbaud's encouragement since the project's inception and for his interviews and conversation. Thanks also goes to Steve Ignorant and a number of other people in Vaucher's circle for further shedding light on her approach and life. Banksy, Mike Diboll, Alistair Livingstone (sadly departed) and Dominic Thackray deserve a special mention in this respect; as does Brandon Taylor for his encouragement, Harvey Birrell for introducing me to Gee and Penny, and my old friend Charlotte (Pink) Brennan for sharing her mother's anecdotes about teaching Penny and Gee at art school. My peers in the Punk Scholars Network and the Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change Forum have also been vital resources for information exchange and support.

I'm also grateful to archive holders Stevphen Shukaitis, Christian Brett, Douglas Atfield, Matt Worley, Russ Bestley, Ana Raposo, Alistair Gordon, Chris Low and Tony Credland for granting me access to their collections. More generally, I'm appreciative to all the people mentioned here for their open and collaborative working ethos; something that fits with the approach of this artist and the networks and culture she has endeavoured to support throughout her life.

Above all I'm thankful for the immense support provided by my husband, Rob Curry, which has included proof reading and editing, as well as providing a listening ear throughout the writing process, which coincided with the joys (and mental health issues) of lockdown and home-schooling our children throughout the pandemic. His encouragement ensured I completed this publication in massively testing circumstances. Finally, I'm grateful for my children, Charlie, Arran and Francis, for providing such a welcome diversion, and to friends who have kept me grounded. Further appreciation goes to the punk scene of my youth and beyond that inspired me to follow the unorthodox path that has led me to this project.

Introduction

In more recent years, the artist and designer, Gee Vaucher (b. 1945), has been granted long overdue critical and media recognition for her idiosyncratic and powerful art and design work and the role it has played in shaping alternative culture over the last half century. Her work now features prominently in academia, in exhibitions and publications, and in the mainstream media. Yet, to date, despite her raised profile, she remains an elusive figure who prides herself on her political and creative autonomy; a position that doesn't always sit easily with art world appreciation.

Born into a working-class family in Barking in the aftermath of the Second World War, Gee Vaucher benefitted from an art school education during the 1960s, when social mobility meant a diverse range of voices were involved in the formation of new art movements and culture. She was one of the earliest occupants of the enduring Essex commune Dial House (later home to punk provocateurs Crass), was closely involved in the 1970s Free Festivals scene (in particular with the formation of the Stonehenge Free Festival) and participated in various avant-garde performance art groups, often with her lifelong collaborator Penny Rimbaud. During the 1970s, she produced an extensive body of illustrations for mainstream magazines such as New York Times, Rolling Stone, New York Magazine and Ebony. Her groundbreaking journal International Anthem (1977–84) gave her an outlet for more transgressive and controversial forms of expression that were highly attuned to the social and political changes of the time. She is most often associated with her designs for the anarchist punk band and collective, Crass (1977–84), that were crucial to establishing the band's identity and prominence. These went on to inspire a generation of artists working in music graphics and beyond. Her work at this time formed a sophisticated critique of structural inequality, an assault on war and militarism, and holds a unique place in the history of feminist art. Vaucher has steadfastly avoided being defined by feminism – or indeed any other isms – but her humanitarian critique of female subordination marks her out from her contemporaries, both in punk and in protest art. She is best known for her collage work, in which she adopted the raw cut ‘n’ paste style of early punk design and the underground press, and turned it into a sophisticated, painterly form of expression. Her photomontage works are often not collages at all, but intricately painted, photorealistic depictions of a skewed reality masquerading as collage.

The ideas of Crass (1977–84) and what has retrospectively been termed ‘anarcho-punk’ ¹ were still highly influential within the punk social milieu that I was involved in during my teens, when I lived in communal squats in North-East London, despite the band having long since disbanded. Vaucher's designs for the band were well known in this scene and made a powerful impression on me. They offered an insightful take on the world at that time, and together with the music provided a vision that was exciting and emancipatory. ‘It's your world too; you can do what you want.’

²

While the artwork had a great impact in these ways, the artist herself remained anonymous. Crass had operated as a collective, subsuming their identities and individual contributions within the group as a whole. Indeed, there was a more or less widespread assumption that the graphics accompanying their record releases had been produced by a man.

This began to shift in the 1990s as Vaucher began exhibiting her Crass material alongside newer work, but when I decided to return to higher education to complete an MA in Art History (UCL, 2010), I found there had been very little written about her and the profound impact she'd had in these milieus. This was despite a historicisation process being well underway with regards to communal and radical political art, the counterculture and punk. Comparators of hers, such as the performance art and music collective, COUM Transmissions (1969–76), and political photomontage artists Peter Kennard and Martha Rosler, have all been more feted. Her work was omitted from publications concerned with radical art production in the 1970s, despite the fact it makes a major contribution in this area.³ When its significance in this respect has been recognised, it has often mistakenly been subsumed into the prevailing leftist political narrative of that era. No doubt the fact her work existed outside the existing funding structures of the time, as well as the absence of an overtly leftist positioning, has contributed to its marginalisation in this context. Similarly, in the history of punk graphics, her work has received nothing like the attention afforded her contemporaries such as Jamie Reid and Linder Sterling.

It was at this point that I first approached Vaucher for an interview, through a mutual friend. She agreed, kindly collecting me from Epping tube station in her beat-up car. As I approached the enigmatic, ancient (seventeenth-century) cottage and extensive gardens of Dial House, I experienced a feeling of coming home that is apparently common to many visitors. For me personally, it firstly evoked memories of a bohemian childhood in Leamington Spa (Warwickshire), a place that was especially characterised by so much of the imagination, freedom and idealism of the era. It felt as though these qualities had not been eroded, but instead continued here; a place appealingly out of step, out of the march of time. I was also stirred to be visiting the birthplace of Crass, to be seeing for myself the ‘anarchist’, open house ‘commune’ that had sheltered numerous punks who turned up to see how Crass lived, passing through transitorily, or living there for a while, camping out in the garden. From its inception in 1967, Rimbaud intended the house to provide respite for weary travellers, a phenomenon he saw being reciprocated by numerous other open houses around the country. This practice has continued to this day, with ‘hipsters’ (2000–10s), replacing the hippies (1970s), punks (1980s), artists, ecologists and others seeking respite or inspiration.

While Vaucher's work during the Crass era provided a stimulus for both a social movement and a shift in the production of music graphics more generally, it is from the 1990s onward, after returning to art production after the burnout that resulted from the Crass years, that she truly blossomed as an artist. From that point on, her work has built on the collage aesthetic, but manifested in a host of mediums, from installations to oil paintings to street art. It has also taken on a more complex and subtle means of communication, although it continues to provide an idiosyncratic reflection of the times. In this it provides a stark contrast to the approach of the Young British Artists in the late 1990s, while both inspiring and contributing to the more politicised art movements of the twenty-first century.

While this book is the first monograph about this singular artist, over the last decade her work has received increased recognition. A series of prominent publications and exhibitions, on punk art and design in the 2010s, foregrounded her work for Crass and International Anthem. It now features prominently in exhibitions, publications and academic conferences, particularly those concerned with punk and post-punk graphics and the