Just finished this mythologically seditious poster.
If you're not familiar with the story, it's said that if the ravens leave the Tower of London the British Empire will fall and the monarchy will collapse. There are a minimum of 6 ravens in the Tower at all times, with one 'spare'. In the interests of national security, their wings are clipped to keep them off balance so it's hard for them to fly away.
In the type of preposterousness that can only be found in Britain, the ravens are officially enlisted as British soldiers and can be dismissed for undisciplined conduct or desertion. In the 1980s, "Raven George", a suspected comrade, was retired to Wales for attacking and destroying TV aerials. In 1996 two more Ravens were dismissed for "conduct unbecoming", which if you know any soldiers, you can only imagine how bad the conduct would have to be for that to happen.
Ravens are incredibly smart and likely frustrated by captivity. Two of the ravens separately figured out that they could cause havoc by playing dead, which I would like to think of as a form of protest. Over the years, some have successfully escaped, but more recently, only one raven named Munin managed to make a break for it, before being caught by an awful member of the public and returned to his prison.
I'm doing some limited edition prints, available here.
Extended Bayuex Tapestry: Bloody Sunday.
Bloody Sunday was a massacre on 30th January 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland, when British soldiers from the Parachute Regiment shot 26 unarmed civilians during a civil rights protest march. 14 people died, 7 of them teenagers. Many of the victims were shot while fleeing from the soldiers, and some were shot while trying to help the wounded. Other protesters were injured by shrapnel, rubber bullets or batons, and two were run down by army vehicles.
The initial tribunal into the killings was a whitewash and exonerated the soldiers of any wrongdoing, claiming the protesters had been armed. Decades later the Saville Inquiry (no relation) found the killings had been unjustified and unjustifiable.
As of 2020 only one soldier (Soldier F) is to face charges for the massacre.
You may remember I painted the below image last year and auctioned the original on ebay to raise money for the anti-whale hunting charity Sea Shepherd UK. It was inspired by the actual signs Japanese whalers hold up while they’re being photographed poaching whales in the South Atlantic.
But there was a problem; that charity auction was sabotaged, deliberately, and not by a pro-whaler, but by an anti-trans activist who was furious I didn’t want to talk to him about his horrible anti-trans opinions anymore.
He put in the highest bid, then refused to pay, all so he could write a negative review, which is deleted by ebay anyway if a bidder doesn’t pay so the whole exercise was pointless and hurt nobody except a few sea creatures.
This confused me. What on earth did anti-trans activists have against whales? Do terfs hate whales now too?
But then I realised: it’s because the ocean is a gender-neutral toilet, and they’re furious about it.
So I decided to do another whale painting (above), and I’ll be auctioning this one off for the UK trans charity Sparkle, as well a re-auctioning the first painting for Sea Shepherd UK. I’m running both auctions on ebay now. 100% of the final selling price goes towards each charity.
Links:
I'm also doing the gender-neutral toilet image as a limited-edition print with 50% of proceeds going to Sparkle.
