Rebecca Binns, "Gee Vaucher: Beyond Punk, Feminism and the Avant-Garde" (Manchester UP, 2022)

New Books in Performing Arts

Rebecca Binn's Gee Vaucher: Beyond Punk, Feminism and the Avante Garde (Manchester University Press, 2022) is the first book-length work dedicated to the life and career of Vaucher. As one of the people who defined punk's protest art in the 1970s and 1980s, Gee Vaucher (b. 1945) deserves to be much better-known. She produced confrontational album covers for the legendary anarchist band Crass and later went on to do the same for Northern indie legends the Charlatans, among others. More recently, her work was recognized the day after Donald Trump's 2016 election victory, when the front page of the Daily Mirror ran her 1989 painting Oh America, which shows the Statue of Liberty, head in hands. This is the first book to critically assess an extensive range of Vaucher's work. It examines her unique position connecting avant-garde art movements, counterculture, punk and even contemporary street art. While Vaucher rejects all 'isms', her work offers a unique take on the history of feminist art. The book explores how her life has shaped her output, with particular focus on the open-house collective at Dial House in Essex, a centre for radical creativity.

Rebekah Buchanan is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music.

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