THE ARTIST GIVING A VOICE TO THE WORKING CLASS
THE QUEER PERFORMANCE ARTIST, LIV WYNTER, TALKS TO SISTERHOOD ABOUT HER NEW EXHIBITION WITH THE INDIGO PROJECT AND HOW SHE GETS HER BEST STORIES FROM THE PUB
Liv Wynter is a Virgo.
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She tells me this as she swirls her iced latte around in a plastic cup. Wynter doesn’t appear to be your typical Virgo. Shy and quiet she is not. A sleeve of tattoos creep out from under her tracksuit, several piercings decorate her pale face, and grey-blue eyes stare from gold-rimmed glasses. A head of shaved bleached blonde hair and a peppering of expletives exude a ‘Don’t give a fuck’ attitude. But, as I find out, Wynter really does give a fuck.
Wynter is a text-based artist, activist and youth worker. But the 25-year-old prefers “story-teller”. In 2016 she stormed the Tate Modern with a group of activists working on WHEREISANAMENDIETA to protest an exhibition by Ana Mendieta’s alleged murderer and husband, Carl Andre. And she joined Sisters Uncut when they stormed the red carpet at the 2018 BAFTA’s to protest against the government’s domestic violence policies. This is typical of the kind of work she is passionate about. Using honesty, wit and words, Wynter explores gender, class, sexuality and domestic violence. She draws on her own experiences but also stories from down the pub.
“All of my work is essentially social commentary, so most of it starts from conversation. I’m very invested in working class story-telling. I work at the Marquis of Granby [in New Cross], which is quite a working class pub, and the way working class people tell stories is just really exciting and really engaging, and I just try to replicate that.”
Wynter describes her work as being like a very brutal form of therapy – she says it’s visceral and people can find that quite upsetting. “I dealt with so much shit growing up, and got into abusive relationships and really hated myself for a long time, and art just really helped me work all that stuff out. My focus with most of my work is trying to remind everyone that it’s going to be ok, or even if it’s not going to be ok, it’s not going to be the end of the world forever.”
Her latest exhibition ‘From Bedroom to Battleground’ is at Hackney Museum, which she created with the Indigo Project, a local LGBTQI+ youth group to celebrate LGBT History month.
“The exhibition’s split in half; one half is protest art, so we’ve made loads of placards and banners and we’ve made a manifesto. And the other half is a bedroom vibe, so there’s a community quilt and these little zines that we’re making.”
The project is a culmination of six month’s work, which was led by the young people. “I went in at the start and was like, what do you want to talk about? So we had a big chat, and we wrote our manifesto. So my job there really is to not do a lot; hang out with them, and they’re not all completely able, it’s about learning how to work with their abilities. So we’ve got a kid who can’t see very well so making a quilt for them was very hard, and we’ve got other kids who are not particularly verbal, so speaking is difficult for them, and it’s just about kind of reading the room, and making sure that everyone feels like they’re getting heard.”
“I learn so much from the young people, and also because accessibility is really important to me; working constantly with a massive variety of people means I’m constantly having to check myself and how I’m speaking and what I’m speaking about. That’s pretty important.”
It’s a busy month for Wynter; on 10th February she launched a new installation at Wysing Arts Centre with a performance called ‘Housefire’. Based on Aesop’s fable of the “Boy Who Cried Wolf”, it is from the perspective of a woman whose house burns down repeatedly, stirring up questions about the fatigue of constantly having to speak out.
The need for self-expression is rooted in her childhood. She grew up hanging out in Croydon and bunking off school. “I was definitely always a little shit. I was quite a loud-mouth; I was very confident.” She did Art at GCSE and A-Level, before studying Fine Art at Goldsmiths. Wynter describes her time there as being amazing, but hard. Particularly during her third year when she was working 60 hours a week, whilst also writing her dissertation and preparing for her degree show.
Art was always an escape for her. She describes how when she was bunking off school, she would almost always be in the art room. “Arts education pretty much saved my life growing up.” Which explains why she is such an ardent believer in it; as well as being the Artist Facilitator for the Indigo Project, she is currently Artist in Residence on the Education Programme at the Tate. “The moment a kid gets to do something creative, they just blossom and grow. It’s so obvious and evident to anyone who’s ever given a kid a piece of paper and a crayon.”
Wynter says her proudest moment was getting the Tate job as she had wanted to do it since she was 11 years-old. “I think my family thought for a long time it wouldn’t happen, because I had really bad mental health issues and dipped in and out of drugs, so to see it all come together, my mum was just like, well thank fuck for that.”
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Photography by Holly Whitaker
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‘From Bedroom to Battleground’ runs from 1st Feb – 5th May at Hackney Museum.
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Liv Wynter, 25, explores gender, class, sexuality and domestic violence through her text-based art, photograph: Holly Whitaker
Liv Wynter in her exhibition space, photograph: Holly Whitaker