Power for the People! The work of feminist art provocateur Rose Finn-Kelcey

Finn-Kelcey was a central figure in the story of contemporary performance and feminist art, working across sculpture, live art, video, public interventions and installation pieces that explore ideas around empowerment, voice, faith and spirituality. Firstsite’s show brings together more than 30 pieces by Finn-Kelcey from across her 40-year career. The artist died in 2014, but two of her artist friends, Peter Liversidge and Simon Moretti, have created works especially for the show.

The show’s title comes from one of Finn-Kelcey’s most celebrated earlier works, the 1972 piece Power for the People, for which she made large silver tissue and black bunting flags bearing that slogan. These were hung from London’s Battersea Power Station and soon (boringly predictably) removed due to complaints from Chelsea residents across the river. “Rich in nuance and ambiguity, the text puns on a popular protest slogan of the time, and what the building generated,” says the gallery. Another of the artist’s most famous pieces is her 1987 work Bureau de Change, “which playfully recreates Vincent Van Gogh’s iconic Sunflowers painting using over 2,000 coins.”

The show will feature some never-before-seen pieces, including 1994’s Truth, Dare, Double-Dare (1994), “the uncomfortable result of an incompatible collaboration with artist Donald Rodney,” as well as Cutout (c. 1982), a precursor performance of Finn-Kelcey’s seminal work, Glory.   “If Finn-Kelcey’s artistic practice can be characterised at all, it would be by its unpredictability,” says Firstsite, “each new work routinely defied the expectations created by its predecessor.”

Power for the People runs until 4 March 2018 at Firstsite, Colchester.

All images courtesy the estate of Rose Finn-Kelcey.