The role of playful, contemporary public art in raising awareness around social justice movements.
Black Lodge Press is an ongoing, deeply political print and micropublishing project by artist Cj Reay.
Coming from a background in zines and DIY punk, and inspired by DIY queer culture, working-class history, and anarchy, Cj creates whimsical and mischievous compositions, combining found images, graphics, abstract textures, and bold text.
“I’ve had a slight obsession with print — in all of its various forms — for a very long time,” says Cj, explaining when his interest in print media began and what ultimately led him to create the project.
“As a kid, I guess aged around eight or nine, I decided I wanted to be a cartoonist and so started to create and self-publish my own weird little zines. As I got a little older, I discovered punk and fell in love with the aesthetics and DIY ethos of it,” he said.
“As a teenager, I played in bands, self-released music and art and took huge amounts of inspiration from artists who operated within and on the periphery of various punk and activist scenes.”
He explained that he has probably created and self-published around 50 or 60 zines or comics over the years, covering various themes and topics. However, he admits that his need to create and self-publish has become something of a compulsion. “I can’t stop! Haha,” he adds.
Cj has had no formal training in art, printing, or design. Everything he has learnt over the years has been through the ethos of DIY culture; learning and trying new crafts either by himself or through workshops or supported learning in DIY spaces.
“I moved to Newcastle in 2007 and the ‘Star and Shadow’, a volunteer-run DIY music, film and art space, became the centre of my world. I learned so much more through my interactions within DIY spaces than I ever did in formal educational settings,” Cj explained.
“By doing things in DIY spaces, it breaks the barrier, or sometimes even the mystique, that you need to be trained or educated by professionals, and usually pay money to them, to learn new skills, especially in art and publishing.”
Black Lodge Press started as a loose project called Newcastle Nerd Punks. Founded by Cj, along with some friends, around 2012, the project initially covered putting together collective comics and zines and monthly alternative listing zines for DIY/queer/punk events taking place in Newcastle and the surrounding area.
“Following on from doing this, I started Black Lodge as an individual vehicle in which I could publish and distribute the various zines and comics I was creating at the time.”
The project shifted over the years, originally being more comics-focused and then more illustrated zine-focused.
“Around 2020, I took some of the styles and illustrations from my zines and began to make them into single-page risograph prints, and then it took off! Since then, I’ve created a steady stream of risograph posters and zines mainly concerned with things like anarchism, autonomy, ecology.”
Cj’s main sources of inspiration come from the multi-faceted world of DIY culture that shaped his life, as well as from individual artists like Gee Vaucher and the band Crass, Raymond Pettibon, Clifford Harper, David Wojnarowicz, Barbara Kruger, and books by Green Anarchist and Indigenous Anarchist writers.
“From the music of the DIY underground to the politics of autonomous DIY spaces and then to the art of the counter culture. All of it exists within a world in which art is not a product but an extension and a result of human emotion, and as a very general thing, that probably is what inspires me most.”
Political banners are also a great source of inspiration for Cj, “a beautiful art form” capable of saying so much whilst using so few words. “When I was 19, I went to a protest in London that later descended into a riot, with a large banner that read ‘WE ARE FUCKING ANGRY’. I still think that’s the best bit of art I’ve ever made.”
As of today, Black Lodge Press foregrounds social themes, producing in-your-face, unapologetic, playful graphic posters, zines, and clothing designed to spark direct action and critique capitalism, with the belief that art and social justice movements are inherently interlinked.
Playing with the medium, the prints act as tools for social change, aiming to make radical politics visible and accessible, moving away from conventional political activism and toward visual culture.
As Cj describes it, “anarchy is the beautiful idea, and in contrast to other political ideas on the left and right, it doesn’t solely concern itself with politics.
“I think anarchy transcends that left/right dichotomy because it isn’t a political vehicle in which the goal is to win elections, or ‘prove’ someone else’s views wrong, instead it’s a living and breathing movement of resistance which imagines a different world and builds that through art, music, alternative approaches to housing and governance, direct action and joy!
“I create anarchist art because I am an anarchist, not to try to convince or persuade anyone else to be. The goal, if there really is one, is to celebrate this culture of resistance.”
On a practical level, the creative process behind each printed project, whether prints or fabric banners, starts with the text.
“I have an ever-evolving list in my head of phrases or statements that I think would work, some of them my own, some of them seen on political banners from the past, some from lyrics or poetry. I then build the images around that using a combination of stuff; I like to create textures using paint and ink, which I add in.
“I also have a folder on my computer of interesting images I’ve come across from old magazines, or from public domain stuff available on the internet.”
The composition between image and text then proceeds by just messing about with it on the computer through a program called Pixelmator and seeing what works best before Risograph printing.
Risograph printing is a technique best described as a ‘digital screen printing’, known for its vivid colours and its specific textures. The process is similar to screen printing, but with the convenience of an office copier, ideal for reproducing work at large quantities, like posters, prints and zines.
“I’ve used Risograph printing for years and years, before it was cool,” he laughs. “I love the result. It’s never quite perfect, which I think, actually, is perfect.”
And what about the very specific typeface in use in every typographic design, which gives the projects such a strong aesthetic? Cj reveals that it was a bit of an accident.
“There’s no mystique behind it – it’s a very old typeface called Friz Quadrata, and for people like me who were obsessed with hardcore punk as a teenager, it’s the font that the band Black Flag used.”
While he used to play in a queer punk band called KINKY, they wanted to create a T-shirt homage to the Black Flag logo, so he initially used the font for that.
Then, a few years later, when experimenting with these Risograph posters, he tried out a few different fonts and thought this was the one that worked best.
The rest, as they say, is history.
All images courtesy of and copyright Black Lodge Press.