From Tamsyn Challenger‘s website :

” ‘Free The Pussy!’ – Challenger’s first curatorial exhibition.

The idea for the exhibition sprang out of her previous association with the ‘Pussy Riot‘ when in 2012 she was asked to contribute to the book ‘Let’s Start a Pussy Riot’ brought about to raise funds for the much publicised ‘Pussy Riot’ trial in Russia. In early 2018 Challenger was informed that Synergy Concerts were bringing some of the members of the collective over to Scotland to perform their ‘Riot Days’ tour, it seemed a perfect and synergistic time to finally bring some of the visual works, made in solidarity, together in an exhibition. Challenger had always felt the works made in protest should be physically seen since her collaboration with the collective on the publication of ‘Let’s Start a Pussy Riot’.

Upon opening, the exhibition ‘Free The Pussy!’ went to the top of the Guardian’s Top 5 National Exhibitions list and stayed in their line up for three weeks. It was featured on BBC Scotland with the Pussy Riot collective and BBC Edinburgh Nights with Nish Kumar. Interviews appeared in Studio International, LA Review of Books, The List, The National, and the Scotsman amongst others.

The exhibition was primarily composed of art made in response and in protest to Pussy Riot’s trial and subsequent imprisonment by the Russian government in 2012, although not exclusively. There were new commissioned works and much older feminist pieces that all resonated or were represented in the book. The exhibition aimed to be not only an archive work but a celebration of visual artists’ ability and capacity for protest.”

For that exhibition, we were tasked to design and build 2 different items.

The ‘40 second miaow clock’ representing the time their ‘Punk Prayer’ performance inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour lasted before their incarceration.
And a non destructive transformation of the Summerhall’s pub, the Royal Dick, into the “Royal Pussy”.

Martin Ling and I teamed up again to materialise those two art pieces.