Martin Charles Firrell is born on 4 April 1963 suddenly and unexpectedly on the pavement outside 70-72 Avenue des Champs Élysées, Paris France.

His early state education in the UK is progressive in line with educational theory of the times. Less emphasis is placed on reading, for example, and greater emphasis on creative play, allowing the creative faculties to mature first. He does not read until the age of nine.

He is taken to the newly opened Odeon Anglia Square after much debate about whether or not the 8-year-old will be frightened of the dark. The opposite turns out to be true and he is moved by the beauty of the modernist auditorium, the immense curved and upward-tilted screen, and the overwhelming scale of the moving image. This visit marks the beginning of a lifelong interest in material presented in public space at scale.

Sees an award-winning documentary in which presenter Russell Harty spends several days in the company of Salvador Dalí. 'Although I was only ten years old at the time, this glimpse into the life of an artist stayed with me for the rest of my life.'

He is part of a cohort of children following the experimental one-year curriculum or The curriculum is introduced into British Schools by The Centre for Applied Research in Education at the University of East Anglia.

MACOS is an American humanities teaching program based on the theories of educationalist Jerome Bruner. Bruner believed it was possible to teach children what it meant to be a human being (and to mitigate racism and ethnocentrism in the process) by studying the lifecycles of other animals and the way of life in other cultures. Bruner advocated a 'spiral curriculum' in which a concept is taught repeatedly at intervals, each reiteration of the concept more sophisticated than its predecessor. This process of 'revisiting' enables the child to assimilate and form a relationship with increasingly complex ideas over time.

focuses on 'the chain of life', exploring the lifecycles of the Pacific Coast salmon, the herring gull, the baboon (particularly within the societal context of the baboon troop) and ultimately, Cananda's Netsilik Inuit. relied on films to reveal and illuminate the contents of the course. The documentary material about the Netsilik way of life (and the interaction between the Netsilik and other life forms, such as reindeer and seals) remains a landmark in visual anthropology.

exerts a profound influence on Firrell, fostering an appreciation of the natural world, a grasp of the interconnectedness of all life, and respect for people who are different, or lives that are lived differently. The artist has gone so far as to say that his entire art practice can be regarded as a sustained and extended extemporisation on ideas gifted to him by the curriculum.

John Hurt plays Quentin Crisp in the TV drama Firrell is ridiculed at school as a ‘Quentin', which has the effect of marginalising him as ‘other’. This fuels his indignation at injustice and kindles feelings of kinship with anyone who is misunderstood or excluded. These feelings will be carried into the artist's mature work. 'I always want to be loved for being so far out. I suppose because I was hated at school for being so far out. I want my revenge.'

A number of teaching staff express homophobic views, ridiculing the artist with homophobic slurs like ‘pink pants’ and on one occasion, ‘sugar plum fairy’. The artist’s response is to pirouette around the classroom singing as the other children stand silently to attention at their desks. Firrell remembers this as a pivotal moment of defiance and visibility, claiming, rather than denying his LGBT+ identity. His refusal to submit to ridicule has a curious effect on both the teacher and the class. The teacher does not know how to react and so does nothing. Her inaction, in turn, reveals to the rest of the class that power no longer lies in her hands but has been seized by the pupil.

His education at secondary level is more conventional and he stops going to school at age 14 because he 'has no more use for it'. Instead, he reads the complete works of Virgina Woolf. Woolf's novel (Hogarth Press, 1928) brings her love affair with Vita Sackville-West into sharp focus and is the first in a long line of realisations about the immense cultural importance and historic impact of LGBT+ voices. He walks in the Norfolk countryside, swims in the North Sea and experiments with amateur super 8 filmmaking.

Clare Short appears on television frequently in the early 1980s. 'Though I was very young, I had the impression that the only person speaking the truth - however inconvenient that might be - was Clare Short. And she was speaking truth to power in a brave and emphatic way. She and Peter Tatchell were disliked in our household because they were thought of as 'trouble-makers' and that made me like them both even more.'

Enrolls in the one-year vocational course, at Watford College of Art and Design. Meets fellow student Pat Doherty (later Boles), who becomes lifelong friend and confidante.

First job as an advertising copyrighter at Crawfords Advertising Agency, one of the most important British advertising agencies of the 20th century. Senior Art Director Ashley Havinden championed modernist typography and a visual style influenced by cubism, futurism and The Bauhaus. These visual innovations formed the foundation of the agency's progressive reputation.

Spends every Thursday evening at the Camden Palace: 'We danced to German techno, I saw my first 'gender-bender', we had no money, we stayed out all night with just enough money for a minicab home (there was no night tube) and then did a full day at work. We experimented with new music, new looks, clothes made of rubbish. I super-glued joke hair into my own to create a permanent false dreadlock. We listened to, and loved, Divine. Grace Jones did a very short live set, then gave us all the finger and walked off. Boy George was just another punter.'

Works as an advertising copywriter at American advertising agency, Grey, in London. Creates and both with art director, Mark Currie, both for Nike.

While still working in advertising, embarks on a reading programme of early Modernist writers. This includes the poetry of Edith Sitwell and the complete works of novelist Denton Welch including and (both copies inscribed '1988' by the artist on their title pages). Reading Sitwell inevitably leads to and composer William Walton and subsequently to (1925), a favourite because of its associations with Englishness and the Sea.

Discovers the predominantly autobiographical fiction of Marguerite Duras. In November 1990 reads and Is influenced by Duras's use of language as a simple, declarative tool, often in combination with subtle repetitions.

Reads Duras's Encounters the life and work of Gertrude Stein. ‘I admired her courage, her work, her unapologetic lesbianism, her marriage to Alice B. Toklas, and her masculinity. She was my mirror image, a masculine woman to my feminine man. She defied gender. She defied definitions of all kinds. She forged boldly ahead. And she inspired me, in my own way, to do the same.’ Stein will go on to become the artist's creative magnetic north. 'I learned from Stein that the profound value in anything lies not in what it is, but in the intensity with which it is what it is.

'And as I walked in the park listening to Philip Glass I realised this music would be with me for my whole life, and Duras and Stein. And that these were foundation stones on which a fine creative life could be built.'

Lectures at the National Portrait Gallery on the life of Lady Ottoline Morrell. Further lectures are commissioned: on the life and work of Virginia Woolf; on modernism and Stein; on the Sitwells, including a recital of several poems from declaimed through papier-mâché megaphones made by the artist (performed with fellow Sitwell admirer, Cathy Lauzon, now Maddoc-Jones).

A passage from (1950) by Anaïs Nin informs his ultimate relationship with language - and with art itself - as something purposeful, which should help us navigate existence:



He underlines the impact of this passage in a later journal entry: The Four-Chambered Heart

Leaves advertising and a sustained period of experimental writing begins. Reads the novels of poet Stevie Smith: (Jonathan Cape, 1936), (Jonathan Cape,1938) and (Chapman and Hall, 1949). Invites Smith's biographer, Frances Spalding, to tea to discuss Smith's seemingly eratic prose and the creation of her alter-ego Pompey Casmilus.

Publishes the experimental novella and the longform prose narrative (both Providence Press, 1992).

Visits painter Langham Bailey (b. 1956; his sister) at her home in Suffolk and sits for a portrait to mark his 30th birthday. This painting, of all material possessions, becomes the most prized. The image has been variously interpreted as a crucification - the artist as tortured figure - or as a depiction of ecstasy/transfiguration. He favours the second interpretation, referring to the intense 'bliss' or 'white heat' of the act of creating something 'wrought out of nothing'. He describes his visit in contemporary and later journal entries:

Begins work on many iterations of an artist’s manifesto inspired by Tristan Tzara's Dada-ist texts, Marinetti's manifesto of Futurism and André Breton's writing on Surrealism. Meets Russian pianist Yekaterina Lebedeva (b.1968) who encourages these theoretical explorations.

Lebedeva will go on to translate the completed manifesto into Russian and arrange for its distribution at the Literaturnoye Kafe in St. Petersburg. Different drafts take many forms but the central endeavour remains the same - to identify an expressive form that can be said to be irrefutably sound:

Sees at the Hayward Gallery (9 February-23 April 1995) on the recommendation of Pat Doherty. Klein's interest in the void and non-ness suggests a new field of exploration which finds its way into the manifesto writing.

Visits Capri and spends days writing in the with views over the . Discovers Steve Reich's and and this music becomes an enduring sources of inspiration. The lyric writing created on Capri is important and formative, reappearing in slightly different variants in future works such as 2008 .



Reads Ernest Hemingway's (1950). Firrell is struck by the Venetian mise en scene, the novel's pervasive wistfulness and the Colonel's International Herald Tribune folded neatly on his bedside table (Firrell will go on to become the International Herald Tribune's, Cultural Attaché in London). Though a favourite of the artist's, this was the first of Hemingway's novels to receive negative press on its publication in 1950.

Visits Cambridge for the first time and is chauffeured along the river Cam by a PhD student called Steve. Spends the summer on Blakeney Point, a large shingle spit on the North Norfolk coast. (Will later buy a fisherman's cottage in North Norfolk near Blakeney.) The summer is particularly fine and the landscape, and most especially the sea, finds its way into the experimental writing of the time:

The years of reading and experimental writing culminate in the publication of the artist's manifesto, in a tri-lingual edition - English-Russian-French - at the ICA in London and the Literaturnoye Kafe in St Petersburg Russia (with the support of Lebedeva).

'I have just learned that Marguerite Duras has died. She was alcoholic, treated for it three times; ruthlessly, painfully honest, ruined, ruinous, complex, a huge life, great. I’ll accept no smaller life. was translated into French for her...'

The year closes with an oddly elegaic journal entry dated 6.12.96:

The text of explores the reductive nature of action, the flaws in language, the difficulty of meaning anything accurately to anyone, and the possibility of using a constrained and reduced language to find a new expressive power. Although brief, it is a structured review of the expressive means available to any artist whose work is founded on language. It can be seen as the attempt to describe the limits within which all language must operate and so designates a clearly defined space for the experimentation that will follow.

reaches its climax in a series of statements that are self-supporting, suggesting that the artist is trying to establish a firm footing for the work to come. For example, is undeniably true and, in the artist’s view, constitutes a ‘cast-iron sentence’ on which it's possible to build with confidence.

Journal entry: 24.11.97.

Reads by French philosopher, Henri Bergson; a brief prose work by James Joyce; and by Samuel Beckett. These influences inspire his attempts to use language in new ways under the governance of intuition rather than logic.

Lunches with Quentin Crisp in New York City. This meeting, recorded in a contemporary journal entry, provides pivotal creative inspiration both personal and professional:

How To Become a Virgin

The Last Word, The Last Word,

Cartwheels across the Pont des Arts in Paris to mark his 35th birthday and the halfway point to the biblical life span of three-score-and-ten years. The cartwheel is encouraged and photographed by Katya Lebedeva.

Signaux Lumineux

Drafts at Cafe Laville overlooking the Regent canal in London's Little Venice. Both the cafe and the location appear in the texts. Publishes his first work conceived expressly for public space.

Visits Stevie Spring, former colleague at Grey Advertising London, now CEO Clear Channel UK. The meeting takes place at Clear Channel's offices in Golden Square, Soho. Spring offers the artist access to a four-storey experimental screen at 1 Leicester Square London WC2H 7NA, effectively making Clear Channel UK the artist's first corporate patron. This begins a relationship that will span at least four CEOs and continues to the present day.

Moves to Soho Lofts at 90 Wardour Street. Creates . These are his first works for the poster medium: 3 fly-posters for Soho, London UK, heavily influenced by the writing of Marguerite Duras. Breakfasts every day at Maison Bertaux, the legendary French patisserie at 28 Greek Street in Soho owed by sisters Michele and Tania Wade. Becomes unofficial artist in residence.

Meets drag queens Jaime/Suzi and Paterno/Desire.

Meets art dealer, Jibby Beane, a larger-than-life theatrical character that appeals to Firrell's sense of the utter. Beane is one of the first gallerists to show contemporary art in a domestic space. On turning 60, she celebrated by posing nude for a centrefold in magazine (editor, Ilse Crawford; publisher, John Brown Media).



With the support of Stevie Spring, opens first public artwork for a commercial digital billboard, a digital animation of simple b&w images of the artist, drag queens Suzi and Desire, and a glitter ball. Text panels, derived from the artist’s journals, punctuate the images.

is followed by This work includes the text implying that it is possible to find peace, if not happiness, through the acceptance of what cannot be changed. References to rain recur many times in the artist’s writings around this time: And: The correlation between rain and kindness, or benevolence, derives from too many unhappy summer holidays in the sun. The failure of the sun to shine correlates with the failure of cruelty in the artist's imagination, and thus rain becomes the antithesis of cruelty.

A contemporaneous journal entry underscores the importance of this particular epigram:

Becomes a film voting member of BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Plans new work with a second billboard company, Maiden Outdoor.

Sees the Lord Berners/Gertrude Stein ballet at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Reads and admires the works of novelist Joanne Harris: (Black Swan, 2000), (Black Swan 2001), and the work most admired because of its French-island setting, (Black Swan, 2002).

On 22 July 2005, Jean-Charles De Menezes, a 27-year-old electrician from Brazil, is shot dead by the Metropolitan police. He is mistaken for a terrorist who has tried to bomb London the previous day. De Menezes is shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder at point-blank range. The artist is appalled and saddened by the murder of the young Brazilian.

Appointed London Cultural Attaché by the International Herald Tribune (now International New York Times). Curates an arts season supported by the International Herald Tribune. Shows the projection at the Duveen Galleries, Tate Britain, commissioned by Amy Lamé and Duckie! The work is a response, at least in part, to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were widely regarded as colonially motivated and illegal under international law.

The Guardian commissions a work for its regular Op Art section in which an artist is invited to comment on a contemporary news story. Creates an artist's impression of a large scale projection onto Parliament. This is the artist's first overtly political work, a comment on the government's Religious Hatred Bill, 2006. In two successive votes MPs back House of Lords amendments dramatically narrowing the scope of the proposed law and introducing broad protections for free speech. The published artist's impression is taken as a realised project and further projection commissions follow.

Hears with composer Steve Reich as one of the pianists at the close of the Barbican's encyclopaedic 70th birthday tribute to Reich.

Meets Mark Thomas, Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at the Research Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College London. This begins a long and fruitful conversation, which will continue for many years, about art and science, human development and the role of culture.

Meets film producer Simon Channing Williams. Journal entry: 6.1.06.

Commissioned by the Guardian to make a second Op Art piece. Quotes from his forth-coming projection work for the Trafalgar Square Festival This time the text refers directly to the murder of Jean-Charles de Menezes - The organisers of the Trafalgar Square Festival demand that the text is removed from the artwork and dispatch a security guard to ensure the text is not projected onto the National Gallery.

Inspired by BAFTA shortlisted film creates with Maiden Outdoor. Presents the same text in Trafalgar Square, working with Rakesh Dubey of the Indian High Commission to produce a Hindi translation for Diwali. This is the first time Hindi has appeared in Trafalgar Square.

Briefly takes an apartment in a block between the top of Rue Mouffetarde and Place Monge in the 5th arrondisement of Paris. 'That beautiful quarter with the Sorbonne and the Pantheon and the feeling that Liberty is ever at our side, poised to lead us in a new revolution of beauty and justice.'

Meets human rights activist Biana Jagger to discuss her inclusion in the proposed projection work . Jagger agrees to meet on the condition that she 'does not want to talk about Mick'. Then talks about Mick, divorce, money. In her galley kitchen, she offers the artist Brazil nuts saying they are an important source of selenium. ( is realised in 2009 with the Household Division of the British Army but without Jagger).

Journal entry: 28.10.07

Creates two projection works for the Royal Opera House and

Director Vera Baghiroli creates a short form documentary about Firrell's working practice and aims. Although only 7 minutes long, this documentary is an uncannily comprehensive survey of the artist's ideas to date.

Appointed Public Artist in Residence at St Paul's Cathedral. Creates a large-scale projection work marking the 300th anniversary of the topping-out of Christopher Wren's architectural masterpiece. Asks theologians, scientists, humanists, philosophers, artists, atheists, and the general public, 'What makes your life meaningful?' Creates a 'cascade of words' inspired by these contributions for projection onto the Dome, the West Front and the Whispering Gallery. Includes the text referring to the murder of Jean-Charles Menezes - - for the West Front. Dean and Chapter deny permission on the basis that the case is under judicial review. The text does appear inside the cathedral in the Whispering Gallery.

Producer Simon Channing Williams makes a documentary film about the year-long making of the artwork. (Special Treats UK, Dir. Roger Penny, 2009) airs in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Journal entry: 10.6.06

Becomes Artist in Residence with the Household Division of the British Army under Major General Bill Cubitt. Creates a contemporary definition of heroism, reflecting the more sexually equal and multi-cultural nature of British society in the 21st century.

The artist interviews serving members of the British Army including senior officer, Major Fiona Laws, and Johnson Beharry holder of the Victoria Cross. Other participants include actor Nathan Fillion, comedian Shazia Mirza and a drag queen. The proposed artwork causes considerable consternation on presentation but is approved with no changes by Major General Bill Cubbit. Text, graphics and video interviews are projected onto the 1960s modernist elevations of the Guards' Chapel with sound delivered by wireless headsets.

April Ashley MBE contributes her story as one of the first people in the world to have gender confirmation surgery. Ashley's courage and grace in the face of daunting odds are celebrated as acts of contemporary and complete heroism.

Sigourney Weaver sits for the artist for . Her contribution is never released but Firrell creates an incidental portrait of the actress from the unused material.

Buys a fisherman's cottage in North Norfolk with the aim of 'altering life in some new way'. Works away from the distractions of London. Swims in the North Sea off the sand and shingle spit of Blakeney Point. 'The cold brings you into the moment and you feel keenly alive. I am also very afraid of the sea, though I love it, and so, again, one is aware of life itself; then there is the blue of the sea and the sky and the white of the nesting gulls, tumbling like blown paper as they fish to feed their chicks.'

Galerie IFF commissions 7 artists and designers to create text posters, using or commenting on the work of famed French typographer Roger Excoffon: Åbäke, Fiona Banner, Laure Provoust, Liam Gillick, Martin Firrell, Ryan Gander, and Stephane Le Mercier. , a series of fly-posters displayed across Marseille marks the centenary of Excoffon's birth in that city (1910-1983).

Meets novelist William Jackson in February 2013. Firrell's proposal of marriage is accepted in Paris in July of the same year. They marry at the Curzon cinema in Mayfair, with choc ices and champagne, on 13 September 2014.

Firrell and Jackson travel to Zürich in 2013, to Cabaret Voltaire, the home of Dada. They visit the Atomium - vision of the future - in Brussels in July 2014 and honeymoon in Venice in September 2014, seeing both the Peggy Guggenheim and Francois Pinault collections. Firrell is struck in particular by the scale and repetitions of 2011-2012 by Adel Abdessemed, 4 life-sized Christ figures sculpted in razor wire (from the Pinault Collection show, at the Punta della Dogana.)

In November of 2014, Jackson and Firrell travel to Alnwick in Northumbria. The artist buys a copy of (1961) by American writer Eugene Burdick from Barter Books, a second-hand bookshop in Alnwick's former railway station. The Burdick is a meditation on the Pacific Ocean and the colour blue and it will go on to be an important influence in the 2020-21 poster series .

Meets filmmaker Lana Wachowski at the UK Gala screening of and conceives Creates (2014), a practical tool for navigating life inspired by the vamps and vampires played by British actress Fenella Fielding, 'England's First lady of the double entendre'.

Meets with Matthew Dearden, President of Clear Channel Europe, to gain support for a new ambitious billboard project

In October 2015, Firrell and Jackson travel to Montpelier and Paris to see the Mediterranean ('so I can put my feet in it') and Andy Warhol's shadow paintings at the Musée d’Art Moderne.

Creates for the hill town of Fanzara near Valencia, Spain. The entire village is an open air museum of international street art called MIAU, The Museo Inacabado de Arte Urbano / The Unfinished Museum of Urban Art. Jackson and Firrell stay on in Valencia visiting the enormous park planted in the former riverbed of Valencia's Turia river. The park leads to the modern opera house, the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, in the City of Arts and Sciences. The building, by the Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava, is much admired by the artist and his studio makes initial enquiries about creating a projection work for the opera but the artwork is never realised.

Creates with the support of Clear Channel, Primesight and Outdoor Plus. Meets Clear Channel CEO Justin Cochrane in Picadilly Circus as the work is tested on two full motion video billboards. Jackson and Firrell travel to the United Nations in Geneva. See Miquel Barcelo's ceiling for the Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room. 

wins the Daily Digital Out Of Home Award for best digital campaign 2016.

Meets Peter Tatchell to discuss the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act which partially decriminalised gay sex in England and Wales under certain circumstances. Firrell is keen to understand the full significance of the act. Meeting Tatchell feels like a culmination of events which began with his admiration for Tatchell in the 1980s as a principled and brave campaigner for gay rights.

Work begins on (Hyde Hill Productions / Dir. Oliver Guy Watkins), a documentary film following the artist's creation of

Justin Cochrane invites him to speak at the annual Clear Channel global conference, 2017.

Convenes a Gender Think-In with the support of Dame Inga Beale, CEO Lloyd's of London. The Think-In invites 200 leaders in business, culture and policy to the Lloyd's Building to take part in a thought experiment based on the consciousness-raising sessions conducted by the Gay Liberation Front in the 1970s.

Becomes Artist in Residence at Clear Channel UK. Meets and interviews Clare Short. Clare goes on to become an important advisor, supporter and friend. Creates five series of artworks for display across the UK: featuring Clare Short, former Secretary of State; Inga Beale, former CEO, Lloyd's of London; Annie Rickard, former Global President, Posterscope; Liv Garfield, CEO Severn Trent Water; and Alex Mahon, CEO Channel 4; featuring Canadian actor Nathan Fillion; Justin Cochrane, CEO Clear Channel, Europe; writer Adam Nicolson and American actor Burt Reynolds; with Clare Short and Frances O'Grady then General Secretary of the TUC; for Black History Month; and an antidote to Trumpism and Brexit inspired by the hippy movement.

Corresponds with Jo Freeman, a student at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s and an early organiser of the women's liberation movement.

Jackson and Firrell travel to Basel, Switzerland in September 2019 to visit Rudolf Steiner's Goetheanum in Dornach. Firrell's imagination is caught by the poured concrete architecture and by Steiner's ideas on education, spirituality, health and art. In particular, the artist explores Steiner's writings on colour and those of Steiner's hero, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. These investigations will lead to the artist's own psychological theory of colour for the 21st Century.

appears at the beginning of 2020 and is the artist's largest series of artworks to date. Although composed of individual billboards which may be encountered in any order, the series conveys a cinematic story of alien visitation, warnings about climate catastrophe and war, the threat posed by machine intelligence, the power of living peacefully and advanced states of consciousness.

The Covid-19 pandemic triggers the UK's first lockdown. At the time, Firrell and Jackson are holidaying at their home in Norfolk so stay there. They will remain on the coast for a further 5 years. One of the ironies of lockdown is that it frees space and time for new thought and new work.

a monograph by Barbara Ulbrist is published by Zurich Books on 4 April 2020. Ulbrist's volume concentrates on the period 2018-2020 when Firrell is Artist in Residence at Clear Channel creating some 40 separate billboard artworks.

Completes 7 German-language digital posters for Switzerland. The work is a caprice, an aesthetic joke, claiming to provide an absolute psychological definition for each of the colours of the spectrum. 'I didn't want to comment on the pandemic. It felt too soon. Instead, I took comfort in returning to pure aesthetics, considering my own, personal relationship with each of the spectral colours.

Works with Peter Tatchell to create marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Gay Liberation Front in the UK.

In 1973, Tatchell marched at London Pride with a home-made placard saying 'homosexuals are revolting'. In conversation with the artist Tatchell recalled: 'I thought, turn it on its head: people think we are revolting; no, no, we are REVOLTING! fighting back, you know.' Five decades later, Firrell reponds with 'Homosexuals Are Still Revolting' reflecting the truth that homosexuality is still regarded as intolerable by some and many LGBT+ people are still struggling for acceptance, equality and security.

Sees a 2005 documentary film directed by Philip Gröning. It is an intimate portrayal of the everyday lives of Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse, a monastery high in the French Alps. Gröning proposed the idea for the film to the monks in 1984. They said they wanted time to think about it. 16 years later, they agreed to Gröning's proposal. The film contains neither spoken commentary nor added sound effects.

'It was very important for me to see I came to it via the colour Green Chartreuse. I had been working on a book form of and I was taken by very specific colour names like Citrine Yellow and Green Chartreuse. The colour led to the liquer and the liquer to the monastery.

I found profoundly affecting because Gröning allowed the material to speak for itself. It is as if he did very little, almost nothing, in order to allow the material to reveal its own truths. I had been trying to do the same with very direct language, nothing hidden or implied but everything simply stated. I was also struck by the film's relationship with time. The monks thought it over for 16 years before saying yes. The film itself is a kind of meditation on time; how it matters and does not matter; that time, simply, is.'

The three posters in the series appear across Switzerland: meditations in German on the 'meaning' of the neutral colours: Grau, Weiss, and Schwarz (Grey, White, and Black).

Publishes This volume places all ten posters in the context of wider colour theory, including a brief history of pigments and Baron von Reichenbach's Odic force.

Develops for the Woolworth Building in the city centre of Sydney, Australia. Works with Nathan Moran, CEO of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council (MLALC) in Sydney to understand the relationship between the First Nation Gadigal People and the site. The artwork calls for white Australia to defer authority over the land to its original owners. It was not selected for display.

Refers to earlier conversations with Clare Short about the rights and experience of working class people in the UK. Develops to investigate what it means to be working class in the UK / blue collar in the US. Conducts extended research into the lives of men who identify as working class / blue collar in the post-industrial cities of Detroit and Philadelphia in the US and Leeds and Newcastle in the UK. The artworks are based on verbatim comments from the men and all images in the series are gifted to the artist by the men from their personal archives. This allows the material to 'speak for itself' as in Göning's

2021 marks the 200th anniversary of the Manchester Guardian, a left-leaning UK newspaper. The artist proposes , a series that anticipates milestones for the next 200 years of the progressive project. In particular, he becomes interested in the idea that gay sex will not merely be tolerated but celebrated for its unique expressive possibilities. references sexualised clothing like the jockstrap and LGBT+ events like San Francisco's annual BDSM festival, the Folsom Street Fair.

Kessler Academic begins work on the current catalogue raisonné under the editorial directorship of Dr Robert Shelton. The catalogue will focus on the artist's work in the billboard form. Development, research, archival and digitisation work will take three years to complete. the work is ongoing and open ended.

Reads the complete writings of Andy Warhol, with a particular interest in Warhol's relationship with his earlier career as a commercial artist:



Begins a series of works based on Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant's dinner service Firrell's version is featuring Ulrika Meinhoff, Valerie Solanas, Patty Hearst and Angela Davis in a series of four ceramics.

These meditations on the lives of complex women prompt further works based on contemporary newspaper reports about Valerie Solanas and Patty Hearst . Firrell manipulates the newsprint to retell the women's stories with the benefit of hindsight. For example, Solanas was not named in the original reports of the Warhol shooting and was described, inaccurately, as 'an actress'. Solanas is now regarded as one of the 20th Century's most important feminist voices and Firrell's re-manipulation of the story turns her into the named protagonist and Warhol into an anonymous, but accurately described, 'artist'.

Embarks on a series of LGBT+ moving image works starting with and . These works are the moving image equivalents of the manipulated newsprint. Re-edited films from the Prelinger Archive undermine the homophobic and heteronormative assumptions of the original material.

The final experiment in this series is , a 6 frame gif derived from 16mm footage shot on Fire Island in the 1970s. The degraded image makes it impossible to identify the artist with any certainty (and the artist himself will not be drawn on the subject). The most that can be said, then, is that the image is a cypher for self-representation, almost certainly an ironic reference to the rise of the selfie, and a comment on the acute body consciousness customarily found in the gay community.

Works with Peter Tatchell once more, this time to mark the 50th anniversary of the first Pride march in the UK in 1972. and complete a triptych of commemorations that began with (for the 50th anniversary of the UK 1967 Sexual Offences Act) and (for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Gay Liberation Front in the UK).

Creates for Zürich and Basel, Switzerland, marking 105 years since Tristan Tzara published the first 4 editions of the review from the city of Zürich. Firrell's artworks reproduce tears, foxing and irregular inking from the original pamphlets to evoke the fragility of the Dada-ists' ideas. The texts restate Dada-ist philosophy still pertinent to our own times now that war has returned to Europe.

concludes the year's work, drawing on French feminist theory. French feminism observed that the oppressor, by definition, is able to shape all of the responses of the oppressed, including what is found erotic or desirable. Firrell experiments with images of 'manspreading' (conincidentally banned on the underground in Madrid, Spain as anti-social behaviour). The artist expects a backlash of complaints when the work is made public but only one complaint is received, suggesting the public's relationship with male sexuality is less fraught than the artist anticipated.

is commissioned by Clear Channel Europe to mark the United Nations International Day of Democracy. The work presents gestural brush strokes of the colour green chartreuse, inspired by the film Die Große Stille. The work marks 25 years of the artist's association with Clear Channel UK and appears simultaneously in 9 languages in 11 European countries: Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.

'I also had in mind Krzysztof Kieślowski's film with its I wanted my to be unifying truths about life and how to live it well. I wanted to venerate justice, in the sense of fairness, above all else.'

Investigates the later life of Matisse. In particular, the idea of late flowering and new directions in the third age of an artist's life. Matisse's cutouts and the Chapel of the Rosary at Vence exert a strong influence over the tone and style of work-in-progress .

Jackson and Firrell spend the first of several holidays at Houghton West Lodge, a Landmark Trust gate house at Houghton Hall, West Norfolk. The lodge has no telephone, no television, no broadband and no mobile phone signal. They walk in woodland, read, write, cook, sit by the fire, plan new works.

Begins correspondence with Amanda Lear, singer, artist, actress and muse in her youth to Salvador Dalí. Reads Lear's bookending an interest that began with the television documentary in 1973. Begins first exploratory work on , a work in progress about the meaning of Lear's experiences. The artist is drawn to the ongoing speculation about whether or not Lear may be a trans woman, as Dalí may have claimed.

Clear Channel UK supports , a sequel to the artist's earlier investigations into the way women gain, regard, and use power .

The participating women in the new series are Rebecca Salter PRA, President of the Royal Academy of Arts; Carolyn McCall, CEO of ITV; Joanne Harris, novelist and former Chair of the Society of Authors; Heather Hancock, Master of St John's Cambridge; Maggi Hambling, painter and sculptor; Julia Hoggett, CEO of the London Stock Exchange, and Ngozi Fulani, CEO Sistah Space.

'Women and Power brought me the friendship of Rebecca Salter and Julia Hoggett, an extraordinary studio visit with Maggi Hambling, and a great squaring of the circle in my meeting with Joanne Harris whose Franco-British work I had so long admired.'

The artist joins forces again with Matthew Dearden, now CEO of Alight Media. The first in a three year series of public artworks is featuring Helen Sharman. plays on, and undermines, the assumption, generally held in the UK, that astronauts are men.

Dr Robert Shelton describes Firrell's as 'a late career masterwork like the paper cutouts of Matisse'. The work is the largest series of linked artworks the artist has ever made, characterised by ruthless simplicity of means and outrageously ambitious scale. The work also includes a flag for wine merchants Berry Bros. & Rudd, the project sponsors, which flies outside 3 St James's encouraging London's establishment to 'embrace all varieties'.

'I used black and white for the narrative elements of the work, as Matisse used black and white in the chapel at Vence. Instead of stained glass for colour, I created same-sex kisses from 1950s colour illustrations, dividing the men from the women and reuniting them in same-sex pairs.'

The year closes with for Belgium. The series consists of 3 artworks, each one executed in French and Flemish language versions. Firrell's celebration of Surrealism concentrates on Yvan Goll's manifesto, published 14 days before André Breton's more famous 'I was interested in Goll's slightly different definition of Surrealism which involved understanding the fundamental mechanics, the inner workings, of reality to attain a higher or sur-reality. I used gifs to create motion that goes nowhere, movement with no direction, no vector. I wrote about reality as I believe Goll saw it. Simultaneously, I translated Goll's original manifesto from French into English because I couldn't find an extant English translation. The Cambridge Queer Press published a bilingual edition of Goll's This seemed to me a great way to end the year, bringing attention to a thoughtful and interesting man who had been eclipsed by Breton and his cronies.'

Firrell and Jackson spend their tenth anniversary in Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast. The pair return to Houghton West Lodge where Jackson works on a new novel and Firrell reads Annie Ernaux for the first time. Reading Ernaux is an enlivening experience because, in his own words, he was encountering 'someone who can compete with Duras for my attention, with Woolf or even Stein.