Shitty Stitches, Inspired By A Shit Job

I’ve been wanting to document this work for months because it’s important to me, even if the actual stitching is abysmal.

It was inspired by a shit job in a top London art gallery. I worked there on a zero-hours contract for fifteen-ish years.

The staff hierarchy was bloody horrible. They didn’t even try to hide the ‘them-and-us’ mentality. And by that I mean that most of the ‘higher-ups’ considered themselves too god-like to acknowledge the ‘lower-downs’. And by ‘lower-downs’ I mean uniformed staff. And by uniformed staff I mean me. Those *curators were extremely important people. Too important to notice a single other human in a room. Too important to even look at, let alone thank, another human in the room who picks up their dropped pencil and places it back in their hand.

Anyway, at some point a new Superior decided to change the uniform shirt from red to blue. I forget why, but it was a really good reason that totally justified the huge expense and wastefulness. I took the discarded shirts home, where they have fulfilled my red fabric needs for years.

Which brings me to the stitching. It’s the banner I cobbled together for an exhibition I curated at Tension Gallery in July. I had such great plans, but in the end I ran out of time, as per. It took about half an hour to make. You can tell. I love it, though. The quality of the stitching may not be up to scratch, but the artistic intention, which was to include my colleagues’ shirts, remains.

A = Lanny, I = Me, R = Neruma, I = Carl, N = Bev and G = Rose. Each a diamond. I didn’t select them, they just happened to be at the top of the pile.

The ribbon, on which the banner was suspended by safety pins (for speed, obvs) was a gift from Julian and Nigel of the Weavers’ Factory.

*It’s not just the curators I’m talking about, but everyone at the top of the gallery chain, born into financially secure families with the right accents, mostly. This is an ‘UP YOURS’ to them. Also, it turns out that art curation is not rocket science. The people who do it aren’t special, just lucky. I don’t begrudge them (well, maybe a bit), I wish they’d be honest about the nepotism, rather than having ‘I-have-this-job-because-I-worked-harder-than-you-and-I-am-more-intelligent’ tattooed across their foreheads. I'm done doffing my cap to them.

Smash Thatcher

Christopher Madden is a County Durham born artist who lives in London. We were born in the same hospital. I was unaware of his existence until a few weeks ago.

In 1979, Chris drew a cartoon of Thatcher which was then used by the Socialist Workers Party for placards and posters. Other people copied the image for their own personal banners. In 1980, one such person drew the image, wrote ‘SMASH THATCHER’ underneath, and carried it to protest against the closure of Consett Steelworks (image above, full credits below). The Steelworks closed in 1980, with a loss of 3000 jobs. One of many closures, as Thatcher continued her axe-wielding across the North. The protest was photographed and printed in the Northern Echo, which is where I found the image. In 2022, I stitched it to ‘Shifting to the Moon’, a piece about greed and short-sightedness, the ridiculousness of the monarchy, how history keeps repeating itself, and how the posh lads are always in charge.

I grew up in Spennymoor which is 10 miles from Consett, and very similar. Nobody in my hometown liked Thatcher. Understandably. I’d never knowingly met a tory until I moved South.

In 2024, I submitted ‘Shifting To The Moon’ for consideration for the Royal Academy Summer Show. It was accepted. Alice Fisher, from the Observer, wrote an article about it, on account of me unsuccessfully trying to get work into the Summer Show for 30 years.

Chris read the article, recognised his cartoon, and got in touch via Instagram. Turns out he has a history of Summer Show rejections, too.

Credits:

Image 1- Consett Steel Workers’ protests, 1980. Northern Echo. Photographer uncredited.

Image 4 - Me with my work at the RA. Photo by Cassie Candle.

Image 5 - Chris’s original cartoon. A screenshot from his Instagram feed.