It’s strange isn’t it? I really don’t like this piece much, I like elements of it, but I think it’s too over worked, too much crammed in and, for me, confusing. This piece is not a collage but one of the biggest painted pieces, just a few bits of collage on the ground which I couldn’t be arsed to paint. As to a celebration piece, I never saw it like that. As I’ve said I always worked on a new album knowing what the words and the overall feeling was that we were trying to put over. That was always the thing that guided me towards how to illustrate the project and it wasn’t telling me to make this a celebratory piece. It’s always so interesting to me how people can view my work so differently. Although Vaucher herself is understandably against labeling her work, it's hard not to call a lot of it "protest art," and hard not to see how it might be relevant—or at least a solid reference to move forward from—in today's sketchy geo-political climate. Her work with anarcho-punk band Crass was seminal to the ' protest art' of the 1980s. Vaucher has always seen her work as a tool for social change, and has expressed her strong anarcho-pacifist and feminist views in her paintings and collages. [1] Vaucher also uses surrealist styles and methods. This autumn, Tate Britain will present Women in Revolt!, a landmark exhibition of feminist art in the UK from 1970 to 1990. It will explore how interconnected networks of women used radical ideas and rebellious methods to make an invaluable contribution to British culture. Showcasing work by over 100 women artists and collectives living and working in the UK, this will be the first major survey of its kind. I think about a single image the same way as I did then. If I think an image is not telling the whole truth, hiding the bits that count or lends itself to be taken in another direction or further along in the same direction, I use it.

I get the feeling that your work is created quite a long way from the art world, but at the same time, it couldn't be called outsider art. Do you see yourself as a "professional artist"?Somewhat predictably, Vaucher is difficult to pin down regarding a description or overall summation of her style of art. Wildly distrustful of any hegemonic or hierarchical art 'movements' or categories, the general default epiphet used to describe Vaucher is a 'political artist'. But such a term, she maintains, is tautology: "All art is 'political', all aesthetic is 'political'. How do you draw the line? I used to do paintings that were pontillist, abstract. I used to try it all, y'know, to see what all of it was all about.

This is a long overdue contribution to an important history. Binns shines new light on Gee Vaucher's significance, showing how her method of photorealism-presented-as-montage can help us make sense of the "skewed reality" around us.' An essential book, giving due attention to one of the most influential artists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Gee Vaucher's artwork has been much copied but never bettered. Her influence is here captured expertly by Rebecca Binns's well-researched critical analysis.' This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Her grandfather – but not her parents – was artistic but it's easy to get the impression that she was self-taught from an early age. "Every child draws, don't they?" says Vaucher about her first forays into art as the youngest of her family with three older brothers. "My most lasting memory is having made a lot of Christmas cards. I must have been six or seven. I remember sitting at the table working away. And my brother did a wobbler and tore them all up. Such cruelty – it never left me. It was the first demonstration of something that was really cruel, especially as he was child himself.Authored by Rebecca Binns, a writer and lecturer on art, design and cultural history, the book is published by Manchester University Press, and offers the first critical assessment of Vaucher’s work. According to the publisher, Vaucher is “one of the people who defined punk’s protest art in the 1970s and 1980s” and as such, “deserves to be much better known”. The cover photo of Stations Of The Crass shows a wall at Bond Street tube station in London covered with Crass related graffiti. In 1978, this was considered to be just a form of vandalism, but today it could probably be viewed, quite rightly, as a piece of street art. What are your feelings about today’s street art and how effective do you think it is as a way of communicating a specific message or cause?