‘Art Sex Music’: First Look At Caroline Catz’s Doc About British Artist & Musician Cosey Fanni Tutti
Filmmaker Caroline Catz has wrapped production on "Art Sex Music", a documentary about British artist and musician Cosey Fanni Tutti, based on Tutti's bestselling memoir of the same name. Produced by Andy Starke, the film explores Tutti's evolution from a working-class upbringing in Hull into one of Britain's most influential and controversial cultural figures, whose 1976 "Prostitution" exhibition at London's ICA saw her branded a "wrecker of civilisation" in Parliament.
The documentary is built from Tutti's personal archive of diaries, costumes, photographs and correspondence, creating an immersive environment through which she reflects on her life, including her time with COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle and her collaborations with Chris Carter. It marks the second feature collaboration between Catz, Starke and Tutti under their Anti-Worlds banner, following Catz's 2020 BBC documentary on Delia Derbyshire; Catz, also known for ITV's "Doc Martin", said the film frames Tutti's use of eroticism as an artistic and political force rather than mere provocation.
- Caroline Catz's Cosey Fanni Tutti documentary "Art Sex Music" has wrapped filming
- Based on Tutti's memoir, built from her personal archive materials
- Second collaboration between Catz, producer Andy Starke and Tutti
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Cosey Fanni Tutti grew up in a working-class family in Hull before becoming one of the more provocative figures in British art and music from the 1970s onwards. She was part of the performance art group COUM Transmissions, whose 1976 exhibition "Prostitution" at London's ICA caused a public outcry and was denounced by an MP in Parliament. She later co-founded the influential industrial music group Throbbing Gristle and went on to make music with her long-term collaborator Chris Carter.
The documentary "Art Sex Music" takes its name from Tutti's own bestselling memoir and is directed by Caroline Catz, an actor and filmmaker best known for playing the lead in the ITV drama "Doc Martin". Catz previously made a BBC documentary about the composer Delia Derbyshire, and this film reunites her with producer Andy Starke and with Tutti herself, drawing on Tutti's personal archive of diaries, photographs and belongings to tell her story in her own words.
The film matters because it revisits a moment when Tutti's work, particularly her use of pornography and her own body in art, sparked national controversy and was cast by critics as obscene, while she and others have argued it was a serious artistic and political statement. The documentary offers a chance to reassess that history through Tutti's own perspective, decades on.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Supporters of Cosey Fanni Tutti's work argue that her use of her own body and sexuality, including in pornographic magazines as part of the 1976 'Prostitution' exhibition, was a serious and deliberate artistic strategy that exposed how women's bodies were already being commodified by society, media and the art world itself. They see her as a pioneering conceptual artist whose confrontational methods, later echoed by figures across performance and body art, forced audiences to reckon with uncomfortable truths about class, gender and power rather than offering gratuitous shock for its own sake. From this perspective, the parliamentary outrage she provoked is itself evidence that the work succeeded in exposing establishment discomfort with women controlling their own image and sexuality.
The case against
Critics at the time, and some since, argue that presenting explicit and pornographic material as gallery art, particularly using public funding via the Arts Council, was a genuine misuse of taxpayer money and public space that trivialised serious cultural institutions rather than illuminating any coherent political point. They contend that intention alone cannot redeem work that many ordinary viewers and MPs experienced as degrading or obscene, and that labelling controversial material 'art' should not exempt it from reasonable public standards or scrutiny. On this view, the strong reaction in Parliament reflected legitimate public concern rather than mere establishment closed-mindedness.