Cycling, Pushing & Pulling
You can purchase photographs and other art by Phil Maxwell here: https://theartofresistance.bigcartel.com/products
Books, Petitions & Conversation
You can purchase photographs and other art by Phil Maxwell here: https://theartofresistance.bigcartel.com/products
Around Liverpool (32)
You can purchase photographs and other art by Phil Maxwell here: https://theartofresistance.bigcartel.com/products
‘Looking East’. Mixed media collage
The mixed media collage (above) is based on the urban landscape of the City of London viewed from Whitechapel. The neat graphic sky line (2019) contrasts with the well worn coat of the smoking woman who appeared on the front cover of my book ‘Old Ladies of Whitechapel’ – published by Cafe Royal books. I photographed her in 1982 walking down Cheshire Street on a Sunday morning.
Two different eras are frozen in time. The woman can be viewed as a dogged survivor of a continuously shifting urban landscape that cares little for the inhabitants of the East End and more for the financial prowess of the City.
You can purchase this unique work here: etsy.me/3Da1jVG
Imagining Liz Truss
Given the self serving vanity of most politicians I usually relish producing satirical images of them. Nevertheless, the process requires a degree of awkward research of videos that can be used to grab images that can be manipulated. Liz Truss was particularly awkward because it meant I had to watch her grandstanding and promising everything to the Tory membership in order to gain votes in the leadership election. It was a nauseating experience that reminded me of a scene in Stanley Kubrick’s superb 1971 dystopian crime film ‘A Clockwork Orange‘. Malcolm McDowell played a sadistic gangleader who agrees to volunteer for a ‘conduct-aversion experiment’; at one point McDowell is seen strapped to a chair with his eyes tortured using a brutal device that clamped his eyes open as he watched a screen. I remember covering my eyes when I first saw the film in the 1970s.
You may conclude that I am not a fan of Liz Truss. I viewed all the footage I’d gathered of Truss with some horror. Lenin said that “fascism is capitalism in decay” and it certainly is the case that capitalism is in a deep crisis around the world. With two ideas in my head – horror and fascism – I arrived at the Liz Truss you see below. A sadistic face holds a bloodied knife; the Prime Minister becomes a ghoul starring in a horror movie presiding over cuts that will inevitably lead to the death of vulnerable UK citizens.
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