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Sue Coe

 

[Born 1951 Tamworth England; 1970-73 Royal College of Art, London and
residing in USA, 1972-present]

 

Another one of my favorite artists. She is a lot more dark and pointed than I usually like but I love her work. I was able to meet her once when I just started college and I think that had some effect on me for sure. I loved her Malcolm X pieces and her work just brought subjects like racism and animal cruelty to a place that was never as expected and trite as almost every other artist I knew that tried.

Canned Biographical Information:

British-born Sue Coe has spent her 30-year career in the U.S. taking a stand on social problems through her controversial work, hoping not to shock, but to educate, influence and inspire change and action. Her artwork, illustrations and books address issues such as apartheid, AIDS, animal rights, the Ku Klux Klan, Ethiopian famine and terrorism in Northern Ireland. Coe’s work is featured in museums worldwide, including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Art and the Oxford Museum of Modern Art.

 

Sue Coe presents her current preoccupation—the concept of culling. The word derives from the Latin, meaning to gather together, to select. Over the last 15 years, Coe's artwork and life have involved depicting the suffering of animals used in food production. The juggernaut of the global economy has intensified farm animal production, to the level in the U.S. of six billion animals slaughtered every year. Even as individual awareness of animal suffering and the devastating environmental impact of factory farming increases, the slaughter intensifies. As capital globalizes, the individual becomes increasingly isolated from any decision-making. Coe will show some of her most intense work to date created in response to the devastating spread of viruses among cattle and the ensuing bonfires of animal flesh that scarred European farms earlier this year. May those flames illuminate an awareness not of animal rights, but what gives us humans the right to murder other animals.

 

 

The exhibit I saw was Porkopoilis in the early 90's or so. She gave a talk at UMSL. I guess I was actually in college then.

Additional Links:

See Porkopolis

Galerie St. Etienne bio and work from her exclusive dealer