Anne Kernan

WHAT a pleasure it was to catch up with the artist Anne Kernan this week, who has published a photobook about her favourite word.

C**t is a Word aims to reclaim the word, considered vile by many, from what she believes are misplaced, derogatory, and sexist connotations.

Ahead of a Q&A at the Clerkenwell Festival next month, she told me: “I’ve always really loved the word. There are people who really are against it and I don’t think they should be. It’s considered to be the worst word but there are far worse words, such as racist or homophobic words.

“But the whole thing about this is anybody can be a c**t, it’s not directed at anybody in particular so I wanted to celebrate that.

“I think words like bitch, whore, slag, slut, are really gendered because you don’t use them for men at all but you could call a man a c**t so I don’t think it’s a sexist word.

“If you use it in a way that isn’t with hatred that’s what makes it funny, you use something so casually and I think that makes it funny for me.”

Last December she published her photobook that has had a “really positive reception”, even from people who don’t like using the word.

An image from Ms Kernan’s book

Each page depicts the word spelt out using different objects from Sindy dolls to leeks.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Ms Kernan got the idea for the project when a friend remarked that she would send a birthday card with an image of a cat on it to her every year.

“I thought if I had to do that for someone what would I do?

“If I had to give someone the same card every year I decided it would have the word on it,” she said.

In 2021 she started the project with the aim of creating an image using embroidery, photography and Photoshop to spell “****” every single day for a year. But each image took longer than expected so she didn’t see it through till the end of the year.

Ms Kernan said: “It’s an A5 book and each day is a different one. Some I did are around a particular day, such as on St Patrick’s Day I took a photo of toy snakes spelling the word.

“For St David’s Day I used leeks. Other days were just random. It’s mainly to do with humour.”

Clerkenwell Festival, free to attend on August 24, also boasts activities for children including tug of war, balloon animals, a bouncy castle and face-painting.

Sixties soul icon PP Arnold will be singing, you can test your local knowledge in a quiz, or pick up some rare items at a rock’n’roll jumble sale.

And the dog show starts at 1pm.