I Shoplift Therefore I Am

Self-styled ‘Mad In England’ extreme craftivist Carrie Reichardt’s work takes various forms but she is probably best known for her innovative, campaigning and oppositional mosaic art. In 2013 she was awarded the Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship enabling her to work with local communities in Chile and Mexico. Closer to home Reichardt is soon to complete a three-year ceramic mural project: ensuring that the revamping of South Acton Estate gives voice to people who’ve lived there for generations rather than merely installing an artwork that chimes with the architect’s colour scheme. English Hedonist ‘Rebel Not Taken’ Bob Osborne credits his forbears’ lives lived on the margins of society – from the ‘pitchfork’ rebel of 1685 to petty criminals in the underworld of London in the 1950s and 60s – as influences on his personal as well as aesthetic outlook. Osborne’s adroit combination of folk and pop culture ephemera: fairground slot machines, ‘saucy’ seaside postcards, cheap toys and peepshow erotica result in fascinating miniature agglomerations. Reichardt and Osborne together produce art that is witty and scurrilous. Their defacement of 50’s and 60’s ‘glamour girl’ playing cards: animal masks, tattoos, wording from call girl cards, scuttling cockroaches, skulls and pills range across ‘pin-up’ portraits that nowadays appear almost soothingly wholesome. Reichardt and Osborne’s black, anarchic and pointed phrases reintroduce a contemporary critical edge: Buy Less Fuck More; Bad Mother New In Town; All I Want Is An End To White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy, I Shoplift Therefore I Am…

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http://carriereichardt.com http://www.robertosborne.org.uk