Needs More Brick
Over coffee in a museum café, Down the Banksy and Sloppy Jo argue about a poster: whether making it handsome has cost it its temper, and whether adding dirt would put it back.
About the Piece
A short dialogue, entirely invented. In a museum café, Down the Banksy, the Liverpool protest artist who serves public reprimands, meets Sloppy Jo, who drew the polished version of her poster. Neither woman is real and the conversation never happened. The argument is a real one for anyone who makes things: what an angry work loses when it is made handsome, and whether adding dirt to a clean picture is honest or a costume.
In full
Dialogue, 2026. Down the Banksy and Sloppy Jo, in a museum café.
Sloppy Jo and Down the Banksy, over coffee
The museum café. Two coffees, one biscuit between them, and the poster propped against the sugar bowl.
SIOBHÁN: You put a United shirt in my poster.
SLOPPY JO: Good morning to you too.
SIOBHÁN: I’m a Liverpool girl. I’d handle that shirt with tongs.
SLOPPY JO: Look at the hand holding it. Two fingers, collar only.
SIOBHÁN: (She peers at it.) That’s good, that. Don’t tell anyone I said so.
SLOPPY JO: Four hours, that thumb.
SIOBHÁN: You call yourself Sloppy and you spent four hours on a thumb.
SLOPPY JO: The name is a joke. The thumb is not.
SIOBHÁN: Is Sloppy Jo a sandwich or a threat?
SLOPPY JO: The sandwich is messy. I’m not.
SIOBHÁN: The wall version had brick dust. A bad temper. You’ve moisturised it.
SLOPPY JO: I’ve given it a finish. Different thing.
SIOBHÁN: Put some dirt on it, then. A bit of grit. Make it look like someone cross did it at night.
SLOPPY JO: No.
SIOBHÁN: No?
SLOPPY JO: Dirt added to look real is a costume. It says “this was done in anger” when it was done on a Tuesday, in good light, by me. Your brick is evidence. Mine would be a prop.
SIOBHÁN: So you won’t fake my wall.
SLOPPY JO: I’d be forging your provenance. I’d rather be a very polished artist than a very polished liar.
SIOBHÁN: That’s a good answer. I hate it.
SLOPPY JO: I don’t aim for belief. I aim for conviction.
SIOBHÁN: Conviction. Now you’re speaking my language. We had convictions. We also had confession.
SLOPPY JO: It means the image knows what it is. Nobody has to ask whether it’s real.
SIOBHÁN: Mine isn’t asking to be believed. It’s asking whether you can look the man in the eye.
SLOPPY JO: Mine asks whether you’ll stop walking.
SIOBHÁN: Mine doesn’t care if you stop walking.
SLOPPY JO: Yours does. A notice nobody stops for is a smear on a wall. I’m the stopping. You’re the telling-off.
SIOBHÁN: The wall is confession. The poster is distribution.
SLOPPY JO: Then I’m the van.
SIOBHÁN: (A pause.) I’ll allow the van.
SLOPPY JO: I’ve got five tests. Does it please, does it inform, does it fit the fiction, does it impress, does it linger.
SIOBHÁN: I’ve got one. Did anyone go quiet.
SLOPPY JO: That’s linger.
SIOBHÁN: That’s guilt.
SLOPPY JO: Same muscle.
SIOBHÁN: What’s the other thing you do all day? The tights.
SLOPPY JO: Iceberg. Meaning held back. Almost everything goes unsaid.
SIOBHÁN: I’m wearing them. Under this table. Nobody can see.
SLOPPY JO: Exactly.
SIOBHÁN: That’s my opposite. I say everything. Out loud, in capitals.
SLOPPY JO: Which is why your capitals are safe with me. I spend my restraint elsewhere, so the poster can be the loud thing.
SIOBHÁN: They put me between lager and life insurance.
SLOPPY JO: And the sentence kept its spine.
SIOBHÁN: Mostly. Your typography is shouting.
SLOPPY JO: It’s emphatic. I asked how you felt about it.
SIOBHÁN: When?
SLOPPY JO: You were on the phone to your mother.
SIOBHÁN: She wanted to know if it would be on the telly before my auntie’s birthday.
SLOPPY JO: Did you answer?
SIOBHÁN: I said “mm.”
SLOPPY JO: I took that as approval.
SLOPPY JO: Since you’re being honest, so will I. I’m not calling it finished. The shirts are lit like a catalogue, all too even. The hands should be angrier.
SIOBHÁN: And?
SLOPPY JO: And I buried the best thing in the bottom corner.
SIOBHÁN: The orange and green one. Whose is it?
SLOPPY JO: I left it unspecified. Whoever’s holding it.
SIOBHÁN: Don’t. My face is doing a thing.
SLOPPY JO: Pride?
SIOBHÁN: Indigestion.
SIOBHÁN: Verdict, then. It’s handsome.
SLOPPY JO: Thank you.
SIOBHÁN: Slightly overproduced.
SLOPPY JO: Noted.
SIOBHÁN: Needs more brick.
SLOPPY JO: Needs one brick. In the right place. Drawn, and honest that it’s drawn.
SIOBHÁN: (She takes the biscuit.) One brick. That’s a Catholic compromise: nobody leaves happy and everybody leaves fed.
SLOPPY JO: That was the shared one.
SIOBHÁN: (She is already at the door.) Was it?
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Blind Ant is written and run by Charlotte Joanne. About Blind Ant says more.