Martin Firrell is a British contemporary artist known for public artworks on billboards around the world. He uses the poster form to campaign for greater social equality. His bold and simple works address LGBTQIA+ equality, the women’s movement, feminism and gender equality; and universal human rights. The artist's aim is 'to make the world more humane'. Firrell's billboards often resemble advertising because he hijacks advertising's techniques to achieve artistic-activist ends. This co-opting of commercial techniques and his wholesale colonisation of advertising’s oldest and boldest medium - the billboard - makes Firrell one of the most apposite and significant artists of the 21st Century. ~ Dr Robert Shelton.

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Reading books gives you ideas.

Reading books lets you in on other people's lives.

Reading books shows you different worlds.

Reading books helps you see yourself and others more clearly.

Reading books helps you question why things are the way they are.

Reading books suggests how things might be changed.

Reading books can give you the tools and the courage to challenge people in power.

Reading books can lead you to change your own world, or even change the whole world.




is a public artwork by Martin Firrell for World Book Day and UK National Year of Reading, 2026, supported by Bauer Media Outdooor.

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view more works by Martin Firrell

selected by Studio Head Grace Onyango-Bell