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Writer's pictureAlexandra Kokoli

A Gallery of Wire Fences (in progress)

Updated: Apr 2, 2021


'GREENHAM I' by Alison Chippindale


From our side our vision

To distant horizons is

Barred by impenetrable

Patterns of overlaid

Crisscross netting -- the fences.

It becomes a grey blur.


From their side their vision

To distant horizons is

Barred by impenetrable

Patterns of dappled

Dancing leaves -- the trees.

It becomes a green blur.


With such a view

Why is it we

Who hold to the

Beauty of the living,

And not you?


[Published in the Women's Newsletter of Nottingham Women for Peace (Winter 85/86), p. 1, https://archive.leftove.rs/documents/XJW. Alison Chippindale's website can be found here.]


A Coronovirus 'gift fence', 29 March 2020, Getty Images, https://www.gettyimages.com.au/detail/news-photo/march-2020-hamburg-plastic-bags-hang-on-the-so-called-news-photo/1208510150 'Gift fences' (Gabenzaun) have been used in Hamburg since January 2017, founded by Verena Möckel and Sarah Lena Goos, as an open donation platform for clothes, food, and toiletries for homeless people, or during the current pandemic (31/3/2020) anyone in need of basic supplies (https://www.hamburger-gabenzaun.de/?fbclid=IwAR2cgbURMru908raNw_AY-VHrUGjz9Hjqf5FTccemPQoCQr-ZGWub-Svr_E).



Kader Attia, On n’emprisonne pas les idées [They won't jail my ideas]. Site-specific installation; series of metal fences, concrete bases, stones. Exhibition view «Les racines poussent aussi dans le béton» [Roots push through concrete too], Mac Val, Vitry-sur-Seine, 2018. http://kaderattia.de/on-nemprisonne-pas-les-idees-2018/




Laura Phillips, Performance with Halftone, 2017. Image credits: Elieen [sic] Long. https://www.lauraphillips86.co.uk/Performance_with_Halftone.html



Prunella Clough, Broken Gates (1982), oil on canvas, Tate Collection, according to whose website: “'Broken Gates' is one of several works painted between 1980 and 1982, featuring gates or wire mesh. Fascinated by the effect of man-made objects upon the land, here Clough has set gate motifs against a background of earth colours. The gates act as frames through which the industrial landscape can be imagined.’” Art historian Catherine Spencer describes Clough’s work from this time as ‘intimately connected to the psychogeography of Cold War Britain’.


Sally Payen, Invisible Woman and the Telephonic Tree, oil on canvas, 2016-2017. https://thefenceandtheshadow.wordpress.com/author/sallypayen/ Purchased from the artist by the Government Art Collections in July 2018, and currently installed at the Department for Culture, Media & Sport, 100 Parliament Street, https://artcollection.culture.gov.uk/artwork/18770/


Tina Keane, In Our Hands, Greenham 1984, 38 mins. Video installation with 12 monitors, NEoN Digital Arts Festival 2019 - Re:make/Re:sist, Dundee, https://www.flickr.com/photos/northeastofnorth/49090870506/in/album-72157711848991466/ Installed following the artist's instructions for a free-standing grid creating 'the impression of a blockade' or a divide.


Margaret Harrison, Common Reflections, installation view, 2013. Northern Art Prize 2013, Leeds Art Gallery. Courtesy of the artist and Leeds Art Gallery (Photo: Simon Warner).


The fence at Greenham Common with additions by protesters from the Peace Camp, 1982. Photograph by Sigrid Møller, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, slides scanned by Holger Terp, June 2006. The Danish Peace Academy Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp’s Songbook, http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/abase/sange/greenham/sigrid/sigrid11.htm



Photo by Matt Blitz and Mary Tyler March for DCist illustrating the article ‘The New White House Fence Is Getting Covered In Protest Art’ by Kelsey Proud, Julie Strupp, Jenny Gathright and Nathan Diller, 7 June 2020, https://dcist.com/story/20/06/07/the-new-white-house-fence-is-getting-covered-in-protest-art/?fbclid=IwAR0_M9BOx3RYzdcYl2oZ2x9-tlzdxusFgFiheVB5zyxD2IHtTNbzbvg1Yog Reporting on the erection of mesh wire fences around the White House on 5 June 2020 over security worries about protests ignited by the murder of George Floyd by police on 25 May 2020, The New York Times likened the area to ‘a fortress under siege in the heart of the nation’s capital, a Washington version of the Green Zone that sheltered American and Iraqi officials in Baghdad’. Within hours the fence was turned into a gallery of protest art, including this red poster by Kai Gamanya (pictured).


Photograph of the Blue Gate, Greenham Common, with wool threaded through the fence. Alexandra Kokoli, April 2019.



“Tufts of wool on barbed wire fence” by Neil Theasby, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Geograph. The photograph was used as an illustration for an Oxford University Press blog by Anatoly Liberman (2017) exploring the etymology of the phrase 'to go woolgathering' (i.e. to space out).


Political cartoon by Albert Hahn published in the Dutch weekly magazine De Notekraker, 1915, with the caption: “FROM THE BELGIAN BORDER - Again a Belgian, who tried to flee over the border to Holland, was caught in the electric barbed wire and was killed by the high voltage.” http://www.greatwar.nl/frames/default-hahn-english.html



John Kippin, from Cold War Pastoral (1999-2000), http://www.lauraannnoble.com/new-page-1, a photographic project exploring the changing landscape of Greenham Common after the departure of the last peace camp women. Also published as a book (Black Dog Publishing, 2001).


Unattributed photograph of socks drying on the fence of a refugee camp in Greece, published with the article 'How much have/do refugees cost to Greeks?' by George Angelopoulos, 28.06.2019, efsyn.gr, where the author argues that contrary to popular belief GDP has increased rather than decreased thanks to the refugee 'crisis'.



The fence as makeshift shop front, at once funny and sinister. Gary Krueger, Swap meet (flea market), 1972. ‘The early photos – between 1975 and 1985 – were shot on Tri-X film with a Canon F-1 with a Canon 35mm f/2.0 lens’. Text: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2021/feb/04/la-la-land-playful-side-of-los-angeles-in-pictures?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook&fbclid=IwAR13Rf-hsbD_e-reylgsmczDrQfmWLtAKW0kj8XSvCmyzB1rsYCb8OMjl0Q Image: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2021/feb/04/la-la-land-playful-side-of-los-angeles-in-pictures#img-12


Children’s socks hang at a shrine in Tuam, County Galway, erected in memory of the 796 children who had been buried in a septic tank at the site of the Bon Secours mother and baby home. Photograph: Paul Faith/AFP/Getty Images. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/15/horror-ireland-misogyny-mother-and-baby-home-report

When skeletal remains were discovered near the former mother and baby home in 1975, locals assumed it was a famine-era grave. Residents treated the site as an old burial ground thereafter, eventually erecting a memorial garden with a Catholic shrine. After revelations of dehumanising neglect and murderous abuse against mothers and babies thanks to the research of Tuam historian and activist Catherine Corless, the shrine has been revived and transformed into a protest site against misogyny and child abuse perpetrated by the Catholic Church and the State. A 3,000 page report on the case was published on 13 January 2021.

For a timeline of events see: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54693159


Rob Pruitt,  “Sunrise / Sunset” (2019), digital printing and acrylic paint on Belgian linen, diptych, 14 x 11 x 1 inch each (copyright Rob Pruitt). From the touring exhibition DYKWTCA (Do you know where the children are?), 2020-2021, organised by artists and activists Mary Ellen Carroll and Lucas Michael, with over 100 participating artists whose works will be on sale for $500 each, with proceeds donated to immigrant advocacy groups. Works are based on or incorporate sworn declarations by children at migrant detention facilities in the US.




According to Ruben Andersson, one of the most iconic migration images of 2014. The Spain-Morocco border at Melilla photographed from the grounds of an exclusive golf course on Spanish side, as African migrants sit on top of a fence during an attempt to enter Spanish territories from Morocco. Photograph: Reuters. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/23/-sp-african-migrants-look-down-on-white-clad-golfers-in-viral-photo



Pamela Hardman, Over the Top, no date, charcoal, http://www.pamelahardman.com/drawings.html

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