History Piece by Tom Trevor

Alice Forward”s Gold Label is a fantastically subtle and multi-layered work of art. On one level its is pure artistic gesture, a formal ‘mark’ left on the museum that resonates with the centuries-old tradition of gold-leaf and all the multiple, art historical associations of this most luxurious of materials.

At the same time, it speaks of every drunken Saturday night and the rivers of urine that run through our town centres, highlighting the hierarchies of power and the gender politics which still dominate our public realm.

It is a work about the body and representation. On the one hand, we think of the vulnerability of the act itself, in this very public context, and inevitably of its sexuality, and thus of our life-long, potty-trained relationship with the taboos of urination; perhaps even tainted with an involuntary sense of disgust or revulsion. On the other, less familiar hand, we might begin to interrogate the inherent prejudices that come with such an ingrained set of (family) values.

Gold Label is also very much a site-specific piece in the context of Stroud, referring to the history of the cloth trade and the uses of urine in the treatment of wool. In past times, every public house in the town would have collected this vital resource so that it could be usefully employed in the single industry that gave Stroud its reason to be. Nowadays the subtle relationship between manufacturing, people and place has been all but lost in the homogenising processes of globalisation, with our irreplaceable local traditions squandered and allowed to, metaphorically, go down the drain.

For me, the mark of a really affecting work of art is when, almost inadvertently, you find yourself discovering different layers of meaning resonating within yourself, and in the process start to uncover and challenge your own, hitherto unconscious, assumptions. Alice Forward’s Gold Label has apparently already stirred controversy amongst the art-lovers of Stroud. But why would such an everyday occurrence as ‘taking a piss’ cause offence? We all do it afterall. What is ‘offence’ in any case, other than ‘meaning’ dressed up in the disguise of social propriety? It would not be offensive if it were not meaningful.

In the time-honoured alchemical tradition, Alice Forward has taken a base material and transformed it into gold. In so doing she has created a work that resonates not only with the history of art but also with the local history of Stroud and with the prevailing history of gender politics in the context of the public realm, as well as our own personal, psychological histories in relation to the social policing of bodily function.

Gold Label is a subtle, poetic rallying call to reclaim the streets for all.

Tom Trevor
21 June 2009