'Fuck the NHS': Mr Bingo's coronavirus mission
Photography Lara Beins
The East London illustrator discusses making provocative art for charity during a global pandemic
As of late, the art world has felt a little stagnant. With galleries shutting down and shows being postponed to safer days, established and independent artists alike have taken a hit. And in a climate of survival of the fittest, the artists who can make something from (almost) nothing are poised to thrive.
Such is the case for East London illustrator Mr Bingo. “I’m one of those rare and fortunate people who has a life that’s 100% prepped to carry on almost as usual during a global pandemic,” he says, pointing to the fact he needs nothing more than “paper, pens, a scanner, a laptop and Wi-Fi” to get to work.
Mr Bingo is famous for his desecrating humour, sending beautifully hand-drawn hate mail for £50 a pop (“Dear Paul & Sarah, fuck you and your matching outfits”), tirelessly trolling people on Twitter, and producing a Brexit tea towel commemorating dead Brexiteers (“People who voted for Brexit who are now dead”) that earned him a tweet from former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, aka Mr Brexit, himself.
With his track record, it’s hardly surprising, then, that he’s marked the pandemic with a series of 100 limited edition “Fuck the NHS” prints, which sold out out in mere hours. The project started as a joke on Instagram, but was immediately popular, especially among NHS workers asking Mr Bingo if they could buy prints for themselves or their colleagues.
Each poster, featuring the blue NHS logo on a white background, was printed pro bono by Hato Press, which also supplied the paper for free. Upon release, the prints could only be bought as gifts, with each being donated to one of the first 100 NHS workers to DM Mr Bingo their address. All of the profits were donated to NHS Charities.
Quaranzine caught up with the artist to find out more about the project and how he manages to carry on business as usual during lockdown.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Photography Jozef Jakubco
Quaranzine: How have lockdown restrictions impacted your art practice?
Mr Bingo: I feel guilty, but lockdown has had zero effect on my art practice. All I need to make a living is paper, pens, a scanner, a laptop and W-Fi. So I’m very lucky and can work anywhere in the world, under (almost!) any conditions.
Not being able to go to my studio in Shoreditch, I’ve turned my flat into my studio and moved all the most vital bits in here so I can continue working. I’m also very lucky in that I have a fulfilment company that ships all of my online shop orders, which means my business continues to tick along in the background and takes care of itself.
I’ve made some specifically small prints since lockdown which I’ve shipped from my flat as I’ve made them small enough to fit into the post box so I don’t have to go to the post office. All the printers I work with to make new artwork editions are still up and running too, plus the companies who make bespoke packaging for me, so again (I know I keep saying this word!) I’m very lucky.
Many artists have observed that, since the COVID-19 outbreak, the art market has stagnated. Has the virus impacted your sales in any way?
Sales in my shop went down for a couple of weeks at the start of the outbreak, but then something really surprised me: people started buying art again.
I think four things have happened which have been fortunate for me. Firstly, there are now a lot of bored people trapped in their houses looking for joy, looking for hope, looking for entertainment and jokes to raise their spirits. I do funny art and social commentary, so this is a good time for me. I get to make jokes about what's going on and I have a lovely captive audience who are waiting and hungry for the stuff that I make.
Secondly, a lot of people have actually saved so much money by not going out any more that they’ve actually got more to spend, and they’re sitting in their homes thinking about nice little things they can buy to decorate their interiors and bring a bit of joy into their space. I make very affordable art (everything is £20 to £90) and people don’t think too much about buying prints and objects in that price range.
Also, because people are spending more time at home, they’re looking at their walls more and appreciating their existing art more, so the 10,000 or so people who have my stuff in their homes already are photographing it and putting it on their Instagram stories every day, which is like a free advert for your stuff!
The last point -- and again, this was unexpected -- is that people want to buy little mementos that represent the current time they’re living in as a way to help them understand what they’re going through, and also as an object to mark that very significant point in history.
I made a little print about socially distanced mugging and it did really well; it just unexpectedly flew out. Now, a couple of weeks later, I can rationalise what happened: it caught the collective public consciousness at just the right time when they needed to buy a small object to remind them of the time that we’re living in. This happened with my Brexit tea towel.
Again, I’m only realising this now. I’m not some horrific marketing genius, I just put silly art out there and see what happens to it.
What inspired your recent “Fuck the NHS” project? Why did you decide to raise funds to support them?
I walk around the streets a lot and I was starting to get bored of the constant positive messages for the NHS. Although I completely agree with them and I love and support the NHS, I have a dark side to me that just finds a lot of humour in doing the opposite to what everyone else is doing, in doing the totally unexpected to confuse people. There’s no clever political message or statement behind it, I just thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be funny and crazy if someone just put a poster up in their window saying ‘FUCK THE NHS’ as a contrast to all the other positive messages around them?”
I was laughing to myself at the sheer outrage that would cause, so I scribbled it down on a piece of paper and put it on my Instagram stories. To my total surprise, lots of doctors and nurses and other NHS workers started DM-ing me asking if it was available as a print! So I came up with the idea of making it into a real thing, selling a limited edition of 100, and giving 100% of the profits to the NHS.
The other bit that was interesting was that I made the public (non-NHS workers) buy them as gifts to a stranger working in the NHS, then I asked NHS workers who wanted one to DM me their name and address. They sold out in a few hours and over 250 NHS workers sent me their address in hopes of getting one, so unfortunately a lot of people missed out.
The whole thing confuses me, to be honest. I often make things and people like them way more than I think they will, so I just go with it and give people what they want even when I don’t totally understand why they like it so much.
Some people have left negative comments on your Instagram posts, disagreeing with the “Fuck the NHS” sentiment and apparently misunderstanding your intent. How do you feel about that backlash?
I think there were only a small handful of negative comments. If you’re an artist or anyone who’s making stuff and putting yourself out there on social media, you’ve got to be very thick-skinned about criticism and learn which things to listen to and which ones to ignore. As Noam Chomsky once said: "If you are not offending people who ought to be offended, you're doing something wrong." Anyway, I like doing provocative stuff and if it upsets 10 people but makes 1,000 people happy, then that's fine. Life is absolutely too short to worry about upsetting a few people with a drawing every so often.
You have to be tough if you make provocative art and jokes. I’ve had three occasions in the past five years where a social media storm has been whipped up and strangers have tried to “cancel” me. One was for being a misogynist, sexist public speaker; one was for my Brexit tea towel; and recently I was accused of hating black women. All of these cases are obviously misunderstandings and misinterpretations that mutate into something untruthful that swathes of people looking to be offended will pile on to attack the evil villain, with no research or understanding of who that person is or where they’re coming from. I’m experienced enough to know how to deal with this stuff now, and although it’s frustrating and a bit upsetting having hundreds –sometimes thousands – of people hating you for a crime you didn’t commit. However much you want to respond and defend yourself, the best action in every case (unless it becomes mainstream news) is to ignore it and wait for it to go away.
Tell us more about what the responses from NHS workers have been like.
They love it. They’re 100% positive about it and into it. Again, as I said earlier, I don’t actually know the personal reasons why some of them like it so much, but I don’t need to know. It doesn’t matter.
There’s a campaign called NHS Million who have a huge following on Twitter and a fairly big following on Instagram. They mentioned it on their Instagram and I think it created a lot of discussion and comments, but I haven’t looked at it all – maybe I will someday. There isn’t enough time to sit and read about what people are saying about you on the internet. I’d rather be making new art or out walking.
