Clipping the Church
‘Over two years ago I learnt about the British tradition of ‘Clipping the Church’. As a Czech immigrant it struck me as a great way to literally bring people together to celebrate important things like baking and our mums. In North Birmingham we made this happen with over 200 people, 13 days pre-Brexit. Ironically BBC Panorama filmed one Erdington resident sat in the Church that we clipped, saying that he voted leave because migrants like me only come here for the money and don’t care about British traditions. When Chris Orr (the former RCA Professor) selected me to produce smaller prints for this year’s Discerning Eye exhibition at the Mall Galleries, it seemed like a great opportunity to work again with Jealous Print Studio to commemorate clipping. One Polish art commentator Dominika Mackiewicz noticed that the combination of Bohemian wedding celebrations with UK rituals in 2016 Birmingham created somewhere that wasn’t just Erdington, so we produced these prints as if they were limited edition postcards to the mythical town of Erdingtonia, where leave voters and EU migrants live hand in hand.’