Joy Gerrard | Precarious Freedom: Crowds, Flags, Barriers

Joy Gerrard's Precarious Freedom: Crowds, Flags, Barriers was published by Highlanes Gallery following a touring exhibition of the same name. ⁠⁠

Precarious Freedom was an exhibition by Gerrard that featured a series of drawings and paintings made during 2020 and 2021 and new, large-scale installation works.

In Dark Europe, Gerrard stripped the colour from all 27 national flags in the European Union. This work was conceived as a response to Brexit; however, Gerrard now considers it as an elegy or mourning work, post Covid. It’s unified, monochrome sculptural form might prompt us to reflect on how the pandemic has reinforced nationhood, borders and blocs.

In response to very recent protests focusing on women’s rights and freedoms, Gerrard made Barrier, a free standing eight-metre-long painting. Barrier 1 reproduces a helicopter view of the Sisters Uncut protest that moved through central London after the vigil for Sarah Everard. Importantly for the subjects of Gerrard’s work, the Sarah Everard protest also marked a moment overshadowed by a new and disputed UK Police Bill, the intent of which is to radically increase state powers to control public demonstrations.

The show toured from Highlanes Gallery to Galway Arts Festival and Butler Gallery, Kilkenny.

The book's cover and headings are set in Carrie, a typeface designed by Tré Seals at Vocal Type. On 23 October 1915, over 25,000 women marched up Fifth Avenue in New York City to advocate for women’s suffrage. The parade – the largest to be held in the city until that time – was led by skilled political strategist, suffragist, and peace activist, Carrie Chapman Catt. She was an American women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920. Catt served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and was the founder of the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women. She led an army of voteless women in 1919 to pressure Congress to pass the constitutional amendment giving them the right to vote and convinced state legislatures to ratify it in 1920 and was one of the best-known women in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. The design of this typeface is based on the letterforms featured on banners and placards from this march in 1915.

The book's cover was made using 3mm greyboard printed two hot-foil colours, bound with hardcover, thread sewn, squared spine and a cloth pasted on the spine.

Supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.