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. “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. “My body is just an appliance,” Garner - who was born Philip Garner in 1942 - said in a recent interview. The decision to transition plays into Garner’s own kind of experimental art project - a transgressive customization of self.
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. 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 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. 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). “Pippa doesn’t like things that feel too dry,” explains event curator and book editor Sara O’Keefe. “ Double Your Pleasure: A Pippa Garner Book Launch” will not be your average literary affair. There will be no signing line for “ $ELL YOUR $ELF,” an archival survey of her decades-long career. 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.ĭon’t expect the self-described “senior slut” to field questions about it, either.
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