Type: Exhibition
Artist's statement
“The Arts Council Collection asked me to select a touring exhibition of works from their collections. The first time I trawled through the catalogues illustrating the 8,500 pieces I found myself drawn to three distinct categories of art, figurative painting, bronze sculpture and documentary photography. What bound these three groups of work together were the period of their inception and a more ineffable sense of mood. On the whole the works date from 1945 till about 1980.
My title Unpopular Culture stems from a notion that unlike today, in Britain during this period, stories about art did not feature daily in the broadsheets or contemporary artists crop up frequently in gossip columns. A time perhaps when modern art was an even more rarefied activity, practised and appreciated by other-worldly bohemians and intellectuals. The title also refers to a feeling that many artists then made art that could be characterised as subtle, sensitive, lyrical and quiet in contrast to today when much art can seem like shouty advertisements for concepts or personalities.
As a group for me these works conjure a nostalgic picture of a post-war, pre-Thatcherite Britain, more reflective, more civic and more humane.
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