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Why Settle for a Happy Medium When You Can Have a Happy Extreme? 2001
Instructions for a Happier Life
outlines an artist’s agenda for living happily in a large, impersonal urban centre like London.
Texts were presented as flash animations with simple graphics and bold use of colour suggestive of the pictograms used in international instruction manuals.
Why Settle for a Happy Medium When You Can Have a Happy Extreme?
reflects Firrell's then new friendships with drag queens Jaime/Suzette and Paterno/Desire, and the London art dealer, Jibby Beane.
NOTE
Jibby Beane (birth year unknown) was a fifty-something Surrey housewife until she met fashion designer Vivienne Westwood in the ladies' toilet at the Design & Direction building. Impressed by Beane's energy and style, Westwood invited her to model and, at the age of 51, Jibby joined Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell walking for Westwood on the Paris catwalk. Beane was one of the first gallerists to show work in a domestic space. Her inaurgural exhibition opened in her Bayswater flat in London on 14 July 1993, showing the work of then boyfriend Jonathan Golsan. Beane also hosted an arts club. She described
Jibby's Arts Club
as 'a platform for people to do as they like, whether techno-poetry or an impromptu performance. I don't want it to be predictable'. Of her divorce and transformation from suburban wife and mother to artworld doyen she said, 'I don't want to make it sound easy. It was tough. But life is a gift. We owe it to ourselves to live it to the full.'
Their lifestyles seemed wildly individual and glamorous to the young artist in stark contrast to the expectations of a Norfolk childhood. A contemporary journal entry reveals his state of mind at the time of making the artwork:
I went to see Desire’s striptease act, and somehow he took everything off and still maintained the illusion. Later he was complaining about not being paid enough for the work he had put in, asking me indignantly, 'Have you any idea how long it takes to apply a prosthetic pussy?' My drag queen chums - so beautiful, so mad, like an elaborate rude gesture to Norwich, school, provincialism and bigotry. Jibby told me, ‘Life’s a stage and I dress up for the performance...’
