Pippa Garner at Pioneer Works: Truck nuts for a ‘senior slut’

By Colin Kirkland

Don’t expect to find artist, octogenarian, gender-hacker, satirist and inventor Pippa Garner perched on a stool calmly reading from her new book at its Pioneer Works launch on October 24.

Don’t expect the self-described “senior slut” to field questions about it, either. There will be no signing line for “$ELL YOUR $ELF,” an archival survey of her decades-long career. “Double Your Pleasure: A Pippa Garner Book Launch” will not be your average literary affair.

“Pippa doesn’t like things that feel too dry,” explains event curator and book editor Sara O’Keefe. “It made sense to make it into a party.”

Or more accurately, a tailgate party, with live performances, drinks and a cherry-red Ford Ranger pickup adorned with a ’70s-era “Women Should Be FREE (no charge)” bumper sticker and the largest truck nuts Garner could find on the open market (oh, and watch out, it’s been modified to drive backwards).

The truck, a work of art known as “Haulin’ Ass” (2023) — commissioned by Art Omi and made by Brooklyn’s Arcana designers — marks the 50th anniversary of Garner’s first fully realized car work, “Backwards Car” (1973-1974), a 1959 Chevy that Garner reassembled to face the wrong direction as she drove it across San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, hinting at a constant near-head-on collision.

In the intervening half century, Garner has worked consistently as a conceptual artist, producing an expansive and diverse portfolio of work that pokes holes in the concept of American consumerism by using the very tools it provides.

The majority of Garner’s work, however, was disregarded by the art world after she began gender-hacking with black-market hormones in the mid-1980s, then undergoing multiple gender-affirming surgeries. The decision to transition plays into Garner’s own kind of experimental art project — a transgressive customization of self.

“My body is just an appliance,” Garner — who was born Philip Garner in 1942 — said in a recent interview. “It’s mine to play with, so I’m going to have some fun with it.” Garner was not available for interviews for this article due to health issues.

While established art institutions disregarded Garner’s satirical practice, she published seven books and collected gigs doing illustrations and funky car builds for magazines like Rolling Stone, Vogue and the Discovery Channel’s reality game show Monster Garage. The Audrain Auto Museum in Rhode Island houses three of Garner’s fuel-efficient human-powered pedal cars.

“She was never particularly reverent of fitting in within the art world,” says O’Keefe. “Pippa’s absolutely a conceptual artist, but she saw a lot of the audience for what was being called conceptual art as people who didn’t quite have the sense of humor that she had.”

Pippa Garner

A race against the clock
That sense of humor will be on full display at Tuesday’s book launch via custom pre-meme T-shirts she began designing in 2005 when her vision worsened, making it too difficult to continue crafting highly detailed drawings, many of which are featured in the pages of Car and Driver magazine.

Tailgaters will notice shirts emblazoned with iron-on phrases including “Bucolics Anonymous,” “Guess My Hidden Agender,” “Creep Magnet,” “Power to the Peephole” and “I need an inner child abortion.”

The art world has finally begun to embrace Garner’s kink-forward classified ads, wacky inventions, revealing tattoos, phony mail-order catalogs, custom cars, even her own body modification (these days, Garner sports tattoos of a full-sized bra and G-string with inked Monopoly money stuffed into the waistband).

The 81-year-old artist currently has work featured in various solo exhibitions and group shows across the world, including “Act Like You Know Me” at New York City’s White Columns (November 3-December 16, 2023) and the Hammer Museum’s “Made in L.A.” 2023 biennial, running now through the end of the year.

Much of the work Garner produced for publications has been repurposed or recycled. “$ELL YOUR $ELF” (published by Pioneer Works Press and Art Omi) showcases these works chronologically, making up a rare, first-ever archival representation of Garner’s life and career.

“Part of the project was figuring out how to make sure she’s remembered,” says O’Keefe, who also curated Garner’s first-ever U.S. solo museum show at Art Omi in Ghent, New York (June 24–October 29, 2023). “Because her health hasn’t been great, we felt like we were in a race against the clock to make sure this happened in her lifetime.”

Last year, Garner was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. She believes it to be a result of Agent Orange during her time serving with the U.S. Army as a “combat artist” in Vietnam, documenting the war through illustrations.

For the book, O’Keefe, along with Pioneer Works’ design director Daniel Kent, founding artistic director Gabriel Florenz, and associate director of publishing Micaela Durand, has commissioned new essays by Chip Lord, Ed Ruscha and more in an effort to officially place Garner’s name back in the same conceptual LA narrative she’s been left out of.

“It’s important to correct her erasure,” says O’Keefe.

‘Get Out, Get Under,’ Pippa Garner and Marne Lucas, 2015. Digital print (Courtesy of the artists)

‘From a temple to a Winebago’
The book also provides a glance into Garner’s inner life and process, documented by personal materials, product illustrations, lusty photographs, notes on gender and lists, like “Thoughts On Sex-Change,” a frenzy of thoughts Garner jotted in her journal in response to transitioning.

“My body has gone from a temple to a Winnebago,” she writes, adding that she can now “identify with characters from mythology like centaurs and minotaurs.”

“It’s an amazing body of work,” says Ron Athey, an extreme performance artist and body-modification specialist who will be performing at the launch. “This super-unique journey toward trans, plus this dude-car-culture riff — the way all the elements piece together is perfect for me. It’s unique and honest.”

Athey will share the stage with writer and comedian Morgan Bassichis, trans cabaret icon Justin Vivian Bond and Brooklyn-based artist Journey Streams, who will be sharing Garner’s 1990s classified ads aloud.

‘Half Suit,’ 1982 (Courtesy Pippa Garner)

“Sex Change Powerbabe,” reads one of the classifieds. “Dominant designer-dame makes genetic women obsolete: babysafe, tearless, hard body, tool-literate, nag-free, mansmart, straight speak, stringless, but…unpleasable. Forget it! You haven’t a chance, little man.”

In addition to “$ELL YOUR $ELF,” attendees will also be able to purchase Garner’s 1982 cult classic “Better Living Catalog: Absolute Necessities for Contemporary Survival” (reissued by Primary Information as a facsimile publication). The catalog is chock full of the same inventions — High Heel Skates, Shower in a Can, the Blaster Bra — that Garner first unveiled on Late Night with Johnny Carson, wearing a business suit cut in half.

Pioneer Works Press will be releasing a collection of event-exclusive merchandise as well, including a hat, shirt and bumper sticker that all feature Garner’s rebellious flare.

“It is my hope that this project and this book are one piece that allows more people to see the richness of Pippa’s work and start taking her seriously,” says O’Keefe.

“Double Your Pleasure: A Pippa Garner Book Launch” will be held on Tuesday, October 24, at Pioneer Works. 159 Pioneer St. Free to attend. $58 to get a copy of “$ELL YOUR $ELF.”