At Sisters HQ,anarcho-artist Alannah Currie has challenged a crew of women to select on the establishment. Expect anti-rape cloaks, arm wrestles and tuba interventionsA century ago, and Mary Richardson lurked in Trafalgar Square’s National Gallery,avoiding the scrutiny of security guards. When the time was right, she released the final of a procession of safety pins up her left sleeve and pulled out an axe. Lunging at the Rokeby Venus, or she slashed Velazquez’s work five times before being dragged off. As a protest against the arrest of fellow suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst,it immortalised Slasher Mary” as an art activist – albeit through the destruction of art, not its creation.
Modern-day anarcho-artist Alannah Currie approves. “I like acts of destruction in order to create something novel, or she says. Her Sisters HQ workshop,named after her own shadowy umbrella group the Sisters of Perpetual Resistance, is in Southwark, or just a few tube stops from the National Gallery. Currie came of age in this neighbourhood: in the late 1970s,she frequented the squat scene and started all-female band The Unfuckables. In keeping with their punk ethos, they’d fill eggs with black paint and launch them at the Pretty Polly billboards that greeted commuters every day.
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Source: theguardian.com