Cosey Fanni Tutti is one of the Bureau's foundational Tier-I entries in this archive's post-1969 industrial and performance-art cluster. Born Christine Carol Newby on 4 November 1951 at the Hedon Road Maternity Hospital, Hull. The catalogue centres on five sequential and overlapping working positions: joined COUM Transmissions in 1970, the year after its founding; co-founder of Throbbing Gristle (1975; the band widely credited with originating the industrial-music genre); long-running working partner of Chris Carter across Chris & Cosey / Carter Tutti / Carter Tutti Void (1981 onward); solo catalogue across Time To Tell (1983), Tutti (2019, first solo since 1982), 2t2 (2025); post-2017 literary and curatorial position (Art Sex Music 2017, Re-Sisters 2022, the 2017 COUM Hull retrospective, the Cabinet Gallery London exhibition). The Bureau files Tutti at Tier I for the central COUM and founding TG positions, the cross-disciplinary method spanning performance art, music, visual art, modelling, writing and curation, the 45+ year partnership with Carter, the 1976 ICA Prostitution scandal, the 1975 Biennale de Paris selection as Britain's representative, the 2017 Art Sex Music autobiography, and the solo work across Tutti (2019) and 2t2 (2025).
Tutti was the second daughter of Dennis Newby, a fireman who later became Chief Station Officer (a strict disciplinarian) and Winifred Magueritte Guard, who became head of the wages department of a large Hull manufacturing firm. Per Tutti's later Art Sex Music: "I was the second daughter and I was supposed to be a boy (ironically to be called Christopher); hence I was brought up more like a boy than a girl. I was very rough, always fighting." Newby had always hated the name Christine and preferred Carol; left home at 17 to live with her friend Lelli after her father insisted she either get a job or get out.
The meeting with Genesis P-Orridge (Neil Andrew Megson) in Hull anchored the catalogue's opening position. P-Orridge renamed Newby Cosmosis (later shortened to Cosey). In 1973 mail-artist Robin Klassnik addressed Newby in a postcard as Cosey Fanni Tutti, from Mozart's opera Così fan tutte (literally "That's what they all do," referring to women). The 1969 founding of COUM Transmissions with P-Orridge in Hull opened the catalogue's first position. Per the later biographical record: Newby's addition changed the nature of the group from a mostly musical venture into a performance-art collective involving props, costumes, dance, improvisation and street theatre. COUM ran across 1969–1976; Newby and P-Orridge lived in the Ho Ho Funhouse, a former fruit warehouse by the Hull town docks. Later 1973 COUM relocation to London (Hackney Death Factory basement studio).
The pre-1981 position included a long career in modelling and in pornographic films and magazines. Per Tutti: the position stemmed from a desire to incorporate her own image into collages she was producing in this period; later integration of this work into the COUM method as artistic action. The cross-disciplinary art-and-sex position of the catalogue distinguishes Tutti from the TG-cluster individual working positions: where Carter brought engineering, Christopherson brought design, and P-Orridge brought performance / occult theorising, Tutti brought the integrated method that combined sexual labour with art labour as a single position. COUM's unorthodox methods garnered attention at the 9th Paris Biennale (1975, where Tutti was selected as an installation artist to represent Britain) and the Milan Arte Inglese Oggi 1960–1970 exhibition.
The October 1976 ICA London Prostitution exhibition was the national-scandal record of the catalogue. The two-year COUM project culminated in an exhibition built around Tutti's pornographic magazine and modelling work, integrated as her central artistic "action"; alongside used tampons and used nappies (from Mary Kelly's work) and various transgressive material. Censorship restrictions imposed by the ICA so that only one image could be viewed at a time. The exhibition also marked the official début of Throbbing Gristle, founded 1975 alongside P-Orridge, Chris Carter and Peter Christopherson; Tutti the lead guitarist and vocalist. Tory MP Nicholas Fairbairn labelled the participants "wreckers of civilisation" in the Daily Mail (19 October 1976); the national-scandal record that prompted a House of Commons discussion on the public funding of the arts. Tutti's partnership with P-Orridge ended during the TG era; she left P-Orridge for Carter.
Following TG's 1981 split Tutti and Carter formed Chris & Cosey with the duo combining their avant-garde-music background with the sounds and structures of the then-nascent synthpop and electronic-dance-music genres. They co-founded the Conspiracy International (CTI) label with Rough Trade backing. Later the long-running partnership catalogue across Rough Trade, Nettwerk (Canada), Play It Again Sam (Belgium), and Wax Trax! (USA) labels; documented at the duo file. Tutti's solo début Time To Tell appeared in 1983 on Conspiracy International (a soundtrack to a live action). Later the Time To Tell deluxe-edition LP reissue on CTI with magazine included. In honour of the dawn of the 21st century Chris & Cosey changed their stage name to Carter Tutti; the project turned to focus more on experimental ambient sounds.
2004 saw the Throbbing Gristle reformation. Later the 2007 album Part Two: The Endless Not and a 2007-onwards tour catalogue including the reformed performances at Tate Modern Turbine Hall plus the April 2009 US tour. After the 23 October 2010 first date of the European tour at London Village Underground P-Orridge announced unwillingness to continue performing and returned to New York; Tutti, Carter and Christopherson finished the tour as X-TG; later Christopherson's November 2010 death substantively closed the active TG-cluster period. X-TG continued briefly as a position including completing the posthumous TG Desertshore Installation rework of Nico's 1970 album with Steven Stapleton. Carter Tutti Void opened at Mute's Short Circuit Festival 13 May 2011 with Nik Colk Void of Factory Floor; debut Transverse (2012); later f(x) (2015).
The post-2017 literary, curatorial and solo catalogue opens the catalogue's late-career position. Faber & Faber published Tutti's bestselling autobiography Art Sex Music in April 2017; per Tutti the title was chosen because Art, Sex, and Music were the three threads in her life that were "interwoven." 2017 also saw Tutti curate the first COUM Transmissions retrospective exhibition at Hull City of Culture (the city of her birth); concurrent solo exhibition at Cabinet Gallery, London; the 2017 multi-location curatorial record. 2018 BBC Radio 4's Only Artists conversation with actress Maxine Peake. Tutti (8 February 2019) the late-career solo album, a soundscape self-portrait of 8 tracks (including Drone and Sophic Ripple); first solo album since the 1983 Time To Tell (marking a 36-year gap). Second book Re-Sisters (Faber & Faber, 2022) explores connections between Tutti's own work, the recordings of Delia Derbyshire, and the writings of Margery Kempe; the post-2020 literary working extension. Later the 2025 third solo album 2t2 continues the post-2019 method.
The cross-disciplinary catalogue across the post-2017 period includes the Caroline Catz Delia Derbyshire film soundtrack (the film premiered at the BFI London Film Festival 2019; later 2021 original soundtrack LP), Andrew Hulme's film adaptation of Art Sex Music (photography from 2021), and continued performance-art position in the Dada tradition. Tutti co-edited (with Richard Birkett) and published (Koenig Books, 2012) Maria Fusco's Cosey Complex, the first major publication to discuss and theorise Tutti as a method. Per V. Vale's 1983 Industrial Culture Handbook introduction: "These are not gallery or salon artists struggling to get to where the money is: these are artists in spite of art. There is no standard or value left unchallenged." Tutti's art has been acquired by the Tate and is continuously exhibited internationally.