about.
The artistic duo Bad Professors was formed by artists Anna Babini and Thomas Johnson in 2018. Both coming from a background in contemporary visual arts, they are now using their puppets to address social challenges, and to unveil and ridicule the perverted mechanisms of the dominant globalized capitalist system.
Bad Professors' performative practice borrows from the traditional British hand puppets Punch and Judy, but here it's Judy - an immigrant single-mother - the show's protagonist. The traditional Punch and Judy show’s roots in misogyny, anarchism and violence become a stage to further political discourse around our environment and social issues, often related to global capitalism and contemporary British society. Bad Professors' aesthetic is rough and often surreal, their humour biting, slapstick and tragicomic.
Bad Professors' work consist of live performances, workshops and (more recently) puppet films. Their work is mainly for an adult public, but they have also created shows and workshops for children.
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SELECTED SHOWS
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Folkestone Puppet Festival 2021​
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Folkestone Puppet Festival 2020
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Newhampton Arts Centre, Funny Things Festival, Wolverhampton, 2019
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Arts the Arms Fair, London (supporting Cassette Boy), 2019
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The Jago, Antiuniversity Festival, London, 2019
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Hoora!, Surreal Comedy night, Café Cairo, London, 2019
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Tent City, London, 2018
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Radical Housing Network weekender, London, 2014 (Anna only)
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COMMISSIONS
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Folkestone Puppet festival 2021
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CAAT (Campaign against the arms trade), for Art the Arms fair 2019
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BIOGRAPHIES
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Anna Babini
Born in Italy, lives and works in London. Graduated in 2012 from a Master in Fine Art Curating from Goldsmiths. She works as an artist and art teacher. As a curator she has worked with many young and emerging artists, and with established artists such as Gillian Wearing, Laure Prouvost, Salvatore Arancio, Simon Fujiwara.
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Thomas Johnson
Born in Eastbourne, UK, lives and works in London as a visual artist and film maker. He graduated in 2010 from a Master in Fine Art from Golsmiths funded by the AHRC.
He was co-director of Arts Council funded 9 Plan gallery in Bristol, curated and showed his work in the Arts Council funded Touring Show Necrospective (Danielle Arnuad, London; Catalyst Arts, Belfast; Grand Union, Birmingham). He has also shown with artists such as Laure Provost, Joey Holder, Juneau Projects, Ged Quinn and others. He has worked in the film industry as an Art Director and Director of Photography.
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