An artist, writer and musician with a huge political drive, Ren Aldridge uses her work as vehicles to question and inspire change.
She’s the co-founder of Petrol Girls, an unapologetic post-hardcore band with enraged lyrics motivated by feminist beliefs and leftist politics. The band is fuelled by a desire to raise awareness on injustices, and push for dialogues around sexism, violence, climate change, migrant solidarity and antifascism.
With a raw and rebellious voice, Ren actively seeks to celebrate difference, and help to dismantle codes that marginalise subcultures and minority groups.
Q > Tell us about moments in your life that helped define or change your identity.
A > Moving into a punk house in Peckham when I was 20, and leaving it again at 25. There were eight bedrooms and usually at least 10 people living there. We ran these wild house shows in the kitchen and towards the end had to start hiring scaffold poles and a beam to support the kitchen floor from the basement bedrooms below — the construction company started to recognise me when I called — “Having another party are you? We’ll bring the usual. £50.”
To begin with, me and my best mate were the only women in the house, and both heavily involved in feminist activism through uni, so we also fought hard for just basic things like not having all-male gig line ups. I started running International Women’s Day house shows, and making zines for them, photocopied at uni. I started Petrol Girls for one of those house shows, never imagining it would take off as much as it has, and we recorded our first EP there — drums in the kitchen, everything else in one of the bedrooms. Band practice happened in the disproportionately big bathroom in the basement. We screen-printed T-shirts and patches ourselves to help cover the costs of travelling to play gigs, hiring the cheapest car we could find and piling in underneath all the gear.
So much else happened. I only knew how to rest when I was hungover. I was restless and furious. I wanted to make the loudest music and the biggest sculptures. My final piece at art school took over the scaffolding on the front of the main art building, 3D letters bodged together from metal and wood, each one as big as me, a physical manifestation of the lightest form of the street harassment that I experienced daily, the tip of the iceberg of male entitlement that so easily crosses into violence. As I built it, my body changed. Softness became sinew, my boobs shrank, I developed arm muscles, and I liked it. I got into cycling, riding a Frankenstein hybrid of parts welded together by someone’s mate, hammering up the Old Kent Road, slamming over potholes and weaving through the traffic, often with a hiking rucksack full of fabric to screen print at a studio the other side of London.
After uni, I left the house for six months to do an artist residency that I won a place on. It’s funny to me now that I was so scared to move outside the UK. I lived in Hamburg for six months, and became particularly good friends with the other woman on the residency, an incredible artist called Clémence Roudil, who I’ve collaborated with since. I built another huge text sculpture, from wood, wire and bright pink bin bags, and started collecting and stealing German flags, beginning the “nation fucking” project that has become an ongoing thread in my creative practice, resulting in the name of our latest record Cut & Stitch, the lyrics and video to No Love For A Nation, and CONTAIN / CONTROL — a commissioned piece for Transborders Festival last summer. Bizarrely, this commission came about because the curator, who used to be in charge of the residency in Hamburg, happened to have a drink in the bar that I now work in in Graz, Austria.
When the residency ended, I booked Petrol Girls a tour from Hamburg back to the Peckham house, so I could also move my stuff in the van. I stayed there for another couple of years before moving out but not really into anywhere. So much has happened that I don’t even know how to summarise it. Petrol Girls have toured relentlessly. I’ve lived and half-lived in many places across Europe. It’s something I explored on Rootless on the new album, which we recorded just before I moved to Graz in Austria, where I’ve lived for more than a year now, though I’ve been away on tour for a lot of it. Leaving that house in Peckham destabilised me more than I could ever have anticipated, and since then I’ve been searching for that same sense of belonging, which I’ve not really found, though having a permanent place to live and a bar job that allows me to tour has been a huge relief. Not being able to speak the language of the place where I live very well has changed me a lot.
Q > What assumption(s) do people tend to make about you?
A > Oh, that I’m as confident, tough and aggressive as I appear on stage. Of course I can be those things, but this is not all of me, I choose the parts you see — it’s a performance. I’m actually pretty socially awkward and I really struggle to assert myself in my daily life. And I’m horribly sensitive.
Q > The hardest thing you’ve ever done?
A > I’m not sure. I think I’ve had a comparatively easy life! I’ve experienced sexual violence, which I’m not in the right head space to discuss at the moment. And I’ve grieved, of course, like we all do at some point. At the moment I’m thinking a lot about my Granddad, because I’m just starting to get into plants, and the smell of the wet earth takes me right back to his garden. I’d love to be able to ask his advice. I’ve lost friends old and young, and three lovely uncles, but the only grief I’ve ever explored in a song was losing Skye, our family dog a few years ago, because it’s the only loss I’ve felt able to grieve freely over, without potentially upsetting someone.
Something that unfortunately isn’t done yet, but that I’m finding pretty tough, is the legal case I’ve been fighting along with a group of women, for more than three years. We’re being sued for defamation by a man in the music industry because of comments that we each made separately regarding his behaviour towards women. We came together as a group after we first received legal letters from his fancy media lawyers, and luckily were able to find a lawyer who’s sympathetic to our situation, although, because there’s no legal aid available for these kind of cases, we quite quickly had to turn to crowdfunding once the costs exceeded way more than we could ever afford. We’re raising our legal costs as the Solidarity Not Silence campaign. It’s been really tough, and in this specific case, I’m not even one of the survivors — I can’t begin to imagine how hard it’s been for them — to have to go over these traumatic experiences repeatedly. We often have to respond to emails very urgently, so it’s felt like we can’t ever really relax or switch off. I think we all burnt out within the first six months. We’re also a group of very different women, and working together hasn’t always been easy in such a stressful situation, but I’m so proud of all of us for how far we’ve come and how much we’ve managed to support each other. If we can keep our legal representation then I really believe we can win this. More information here.
Q > Your greatest source of satisfaction?
A > One day I hope that it will be winning this legal case!!
At the moment I think it’s finding the right words, whether that’s to fit to music when songwriting, or to convey an idea that I’m writing about.
Q > Who / what inspires you?
A > Conversations, I think. I love having really intense conversations with people, and I think, or hope at least, that I’m getting better at listening properly. It’s one thing to develop an idea in your own head but the perspectives that other people can give are so invaluable — they can open everything up.
Q > Which things would you like to include more in your life / and less of?
A > More creating and community activism, less touring if I’m totally honest! By creating, I mean writing and art in whatever form makes sense at the time: lyrics, articles, textile pieces, site specific interventions, sculptures, drawings, poems, stories… I love to tour, but it completely exhausts me, and I haven’t had much energy for all the other things that I care about in the last few years, so I’m trying to work out how to balance that out. Reading G.L.O.S.S.’s statement about why they broke up was a big wake up call for me — it put words to the feeling of disconnection from community, which I’ve had for a long time — on tour you’re always just passing through. Of course it’s a massive honour to be able to play in so many different places and meet so many incredible people, but there’s a balance to be found somewhere.
Q > Tell us a story you refuse to forget.
A > I’ve heard a lot of stories from people without papers that really aren’t mine to tell. One poem, written by a friend that I met in Calais, stuck with me ever since. He wrote it out on a bit of paper for me to take back to the UK, before he managed to get across, because he wanted as many people as possible to hear it, so that maybe they’d understand the situation of the people trapped at the border. Completely by chance, a few days ago, I saw it printed at the introduction of a book called Voices from the ‘Jungle.’ I haven’t had a chance to read the book properly yet, but I’m really happy for him to see his words in print.
Q > Challenging conversations, introspective moments, inspirational triggers, political views, social shifts: which topics do you find yourself debating these days?
A > These days I guess everything is in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Inequality, surveillance, the role of the government, the way human life is valued, homelessness, domestic violence, access to health care, freedom of movement, climate justice — all of these topics and so many more are being put into sharp focus at the moment. It’s quite overwhelming. But it’s an unprecedented time to think beyond “normal life” because we’re all being forced to — whether we want to or not. Things won’t be the same even after we get through this, but we have to pay attention, think and participate in civic life to impact on what direction this is going to go in.
