The art of the banner

A John Midgley made banner

The artist John Midgley died recently, an artist who devoted much of his working life to designing and painting banners for the trade union movement and in particular for the various miners' unions. His death has reminded me of a long and powerful relationship between artists and working class political organisation. 

John Midgley banners made for the Durham Miners

John Midgley set up Chippenham Designs in 1970 and his company still continues to design and paint banners. His influence on the making of political statements remains and in many ways his approach to his work was I feel very similar to the way artists used to work for the church. We are so accustomed to the idea that artists work for gallery exhibitions, that sometimes it's useful to see an alternative tradition. The banner is often used to proclaim what is right; by walking the streets and carrying a sign, or putting a sign up over your place of work, (this could be a church or an art gallery, as well as a factory), you are making a powerful statement about your belief system. 

The baton of political protest was picked up by various feminist movements in the 1970s and perhaps the most well known of the artists who came to prominence at that time, who also used banners, was Judy Chicago. 

Judy Chicago: Drawing for a banner

Judy Chicago banners and woven banner making

Judy Chicago is very aware of the religious background out of which socialist banner making emerged and uses biblical text to make her own pronouncements. She also has some of her banners woven, an aspect of her overarching project of feminist awareness raising; in this case of society's association of women's work with craft and craft's difficult relationship with 'fine art'. A relationship that had seen a divide open up between two very different value systems; on the one hand 'men' being regarded as being 'genius' artists who belong to the avant-garde, while women being regarded as the craftspeople, who carry on traditional values. 

Both John Midgley and Judy Chicago were making their statements in the 1970s, Midgley in many ways working in a tradition that was fast disappearing, and Chicago being in the vanguard of a movement that was becoming more and more powerful. 

The banner continues to be an important communication vehicle,  it still fulfils its historic function, church parades continuing to take place with banners carried aloft. However banners can also be still be used to raise the profile of those who find themselves marginalised or dismissed by society as being unproductive or a problem. The Harris Galley's recent exhibition, 'The Unfurlings: Banners for Hope and Change', saw a collaboration between groups of people from across the UK working with artist Ian Beesley and poet Ian McMillan to create banners that were designed to be centre pieces around which a campaign for a better understanding of dementia could be built.

Hamari Yaadain: Banner

‘When we talk will you listen’ is an 'Unfurlings' banner created by ‘Hamari Yaadain’, a South Asian group based in Leeds. The banner asks us to listen, and to try and understand the concerns of people living with dementia. One of the symptoms of certain kinds of dementia can be the disturbance of speech, and the ability to speak a second language, something that has obviously had an effect on certain immigrant communities. The design is a collaborative venture, between the artist and the Hamari Yaadain group, which is typical of community art practice, the artist having to operate more as a facilitator than as an individual creator. This role is often undervalued, but as someone who has worked for many years supporting community art and community art education, I am very aware that the artistic skills involved in facilitating this type of work are just as powerful and involve perhaps a wider set of competences than what we might call traditional gallery art practices. 

Ian McMillan wrote a poem to accompany every banner, this poem was the one he wrote to support the Hamari Yaadain banner.  This collaborative venture giving the project a rich complexity in its realisation. I have not posted on community art practices before, but it should not be forgotten how drawing is still central to person to person communication and ideas development. Ian Beesley as the lead artist will have had to make a variety of drawings in order to both help design the banners and to show all the other collaborators how their various ideas could be made to fit in or in some cases he would have had to make drawings to show how one idea would work better than another. Drawing is for the community artist a key tool, often being used as the glue to hold everything together. 

'The Unfurlings: Banners for Hope and Change'

The banner still continues to be used to carry political messages, Cauleen Smith's 'I Cannot Be Fixed', or 'Leave me for the crows', are banners that have emerged from a practice that encompasses moving image, installation, textile, drawing, and performances that double as community gatherings. 

Cauleen Smith

It is perhaps in Smith's work that we see a more contemporary approach, the banner being one aspect of a multi faceted practice that attempts to embrace the viewer within an immersive environment designed to work across a wide range of sensibilities. This is not new, think of the banners hung in a church, they would be set alongside stained glass, sculpture, incense burning, candles and music. 

Cauleen Smith, Epistrophy, 2018, multichannel video, four CCTV cameras, four monitors, projection, custom wood table, stuffed raven, wood figures, bronze figures, plastic figures, books, seashells, minerals, jar of starfish, Magic 8-Ball, maneki-neko, mirror, metal trays, plaster objects, wood objects, wire object, fabric, glass vase and plants

If you want to see a banner being used as part of a multi-media environment you could look at Mel Brimfield's exhibition that is on at the Tetley in Leeds at the moment. 'From this world, to that which is to come', which is named after a quote from Pilgrim's Progress. The banner in this case being about collectivity and the need to unite in collective protection in times of stress and need. 

Mel Brimfield: Installation shot: The Tetley 2021

See also:

The frame and the banner

Drawing and politics

Drawing for site specific proposals