Martin Firrell

Fires Modern was commissioned by Artichoke as part of London's BurNIng, a festival of arts and ideas to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London.

The work explored metaphorical and often lesser known "fires" from the history of progressiveness.

It presented 18 moments in the history of the progressive movement including reference to black history, the history of the women's rights movement, fascism in Britain, racism, murder and contemporary references to social inclusion movements like LGBT+ and modern race equality.

Martin Firrell (born 4 April 1963 in Paris, France) is a British public artist.

Firrell uses language to engage directly with the public, provoking dialogue, usually about aspects of marginalisation, equality and equitable social organisation.

The artist's reported aim is 'making the world more humane'.

He is one of a trio of artists (with Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger) known for socially engaged public art practice where text is foundational and central to that practice.

His work has been summarised as "art as debate".

Firrell was educated in England but left school unofficially at 14 because he "had no more use for it".

He educated himself during his absence from school by walking and reading in the Norfolk countryside.

He read early 20th-century literature extensively, citing the works of Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, and the French writer Marguerite Duras (with whom he shares his birthday and a high degree of political sympathy) as key influences on his later development.

It was a passage in Anaïs Nin's novel The Four Chambered Heart that set Firrell on the path of socially engaged public works.

In the passage in question, the novel's protagonist declares that literature fails to prepare us for, or guide us through, the calamities or challenges of life, and is therefore worthless.

"As I have grown older I have become more adamant that my purpose is to campaign in some way for change, using my works as a medium for catalysing debate. If you can raise debate, eventually change will follow."

Firrell sets out to remedy Nin's "worthlessness" of words by using language to raise provocative questions about society, relevant to the vast majority of people and freely available in public.

Firrell trained originally as an advertising copywriter.

British social historian Joe Moran suggests Firrell is consequently well equipped to hijack public space with stealthily subversive declarations like 'Protest is liberty's ally'.

In most of Firrell's works it becomes apparent that uppermost is the belief in the redemptive power of ideas, directed at extending or protecting the right of the individual to create his or her own unique way of life and to live it accordingly without interference.

Consistent with this aim is an emphasis on participation.

Complete Hero, created whilst the artist was in residence with the British Army, invited the contribution of ideas, experiences and opinions, which formed the greater proportion of the project as it evolved on the internet.

Firrell has held that the purpose of existence is to develop the richness and meaning of lived experience, that art and culture in general should be key contributors to this central project and that their success or otherwise can be measured against this criterion.

In the Sky Arts documentary The Question Mark Inside, Firrell discussed his view that contemporary art has lost its way, serving a self-elected elite, rather than the wider interests of humanity.

He further claimed that art's proper place is at the centre of everyday life as a powerful force for good, that it should be a joyous expression of our shared humanity, and that his personal motto is "why settle for the art world when you can have the whole world?"

As Royal Opera House Creative Director Deborah Bull said of Firrell: "Yes he's a provocateur if you like, but the underlying message is very rarely 'life's rubbish and you're all a bunch of sharks'.... He's seeking to move beyond simple messages to something which provokes in the viewer a new sense of themselves and their place in the world".

On the same topic, Firrell has said: "I felt there was a problem with writing because of narrative – because it unfolds in time necessarily, and I was jealous of the painters where everything in painting is available in a single field. Simply, I wanted to make words work like a picture and that led me to writing aphorisms. When I wrote All Men Are Dangerous, I wrote something of immense truthfulness and importance with all of its meaning entirely available in a single field."

Firrell has used digital billboards, cinema screens, newsprint, the internet, portraiture and video interviews of culturally significant figures like Howard Jacobson, April Ashley, Johnson Beharry VC, and A C Grayling, and large-scale digital projection onto the Guards Chapel, spiritual home of the Household Division of the British Army, the National Gallery in London, the Houses of Parliament, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Tate Britain, and St Paul's Cathedral.

He was London Cultural Ambassador for the now defunct International Herald Tribune curating the newspaper's first London Arts Season in 2005, titled "Breathless…" after Jean-Luc Godard's nouvelle vague film of the same title.

In 2006, The Guardian described Firrell as "One of the capital's most influential public artists".

Writing in The Independent, Howard Jacobson stated, "I like words on public buildings and Firrell is a master at gauging their power."

Caitlin Moran for The Times described Firrell's work as being built on "huge, open-chord statements that make your ears ring".

Firrell was born in Paris, unexpectedly, on the Champs-Élysées outside what is now Sephora.

Firrell has worked with complex and influential organisations, including the Church of England (Public Artist in Residence, St Paul's Cathedral, 2008 and again in 2016) and the British Army (Artist in Residence, Household Division, 2009).

These organisations have engaged with audacious, self-questioning project content, including "I don't think this is what God intended" (West Front, St Paul's Cathedral, 2008) and "War is always a failure" (North elevation, Guards Chapel, 2009).

Firrell allowed cameras to record his creative process for the first time in 2008.

The Question Mark Inside, a television documentary produced by Simon Channing Williams and Colin Burrows was first broadcast by Sky Arts 1 on 29 October 2009, and provided new insights into Firrell's opinions, aims, daily life and practice.

Firrell's body of work includes investigations into portraiture (Text Portrait of Howard Jacobson, Booker Prize winner, 2010) and explorations of the power of mass popular culture to propagate socially useful ideas, in particular, the science fiction genre.

All Identity is Constructed appeared on UK digital billboards in 2016 examining the principle that all identities, regardless of their differences, are arbitrary constructions.

Some may be less usual than others but all are similarly made-up.

According to Creative Review, "The work, which gives voice to three different identities in a series of 90-second video works, presents the act of choosing one's identity as a human right. The project, says Firrell, is 'motivated by a desire to make life easier for people who don't fit into the usual identity "moulds"'."

Ten years later, Firrell was the subject of a second documentary Overthrow the Social Order, directed by Oliver Guy-Watkins first broadcast by Sky Arts in New Zealand on 21 May 2018.