Spekyng Rybawdy is the latest and most ambitious incarnation of Melanie Jackson’s ongoing project exploring the transgressive narratives and explicit symbolism of Medieval pilgrim bawdy badges. Through a carnival of colourful, erotically charged characters in an installation of sculpture animation, and drawing, Spekyng Rybawdy encourages us to re-examine not only our ideas about who took part in the production and circulation of imagery in the medieval period – but also how this might enable us to reconsider the origins of dissenting representations, sexual politics and our attitudes and behaviours today.

Spekyng Rybawdy parades a multitude of joyfully itinerant and powerfully subversive characters straight out of medieval obscurity and into the flickering light of 21st Century gender politics, sexual diversity, structures of desire, social reproduction, consumption, power and State.