FRAMING THE CHAOS IN WESTMINSTER
M ARTIN ROWSON A shortish walk from the Intercontinental Westminster, across the park and up St James’s where The Economist Building now stands, is the site of a small shop which was once at the heart of British political life. In the late 18th & early 19th centuries, the political establishment would flock to Mrs Hannah Humphrey’s print shop to view the latest satirical etchings by James Gillray, described as the foremost artist of his kind in Europe, and who Napoleon Bonaparte once said he feared more than a dozen generals (probably because Gillray always drew him as very, very short). As Gillray’s great successor David Low said, “politicians are merely waxworks; it’s the cartoonists who bring them to life.” We do something else, too, like all other journalists sowing the seedcorn of history. Gillray’s depictions of Pitt and Charles James Fox are now the way we probably visualise these men: we hand the politicians down to posterity. Or, as Low also observed, “we hound them down.”
Gillray is part of a uninterrupted and peculiarly British satirical legacy that stretches back over 300 years, but also guarantees satire’s place (albeit raucously) as an essential part of the political conversation. That’s because the satirised - the politicians - collaborate with the satirists, rather than simply locking them up. In the 1790s future Prime Minister George Canning’s friends and agents spent months cajolling Gillray to put their man in one of his prints, because they all understood that the one thing worse for a politician than appearing in a cartoon is NOT appearing in a cartoon: because that means they’re simply not important or recognisable enough to be worth bothering to draw.
OVERVIEW & MAP
A Ladder To, Tom Clark B Equanimous, Chris Levine C London Westminster Relief, Peter Millard & Partners Studio
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D The House Always Wins, Evil Robots
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E St James Park, Flip Lenticular, Original painting by Luca Crestani
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F Westminster I & Westminster II Untitled, Watercolour and ink, Aga Maria Pasternak
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Limited access during service hours
G Various prints, Gerald Scarfe H Justice and Mayhem, A tale of two cities, Chris Orr
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Works on paper - Westminster Collages, Julian Bray
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Fellowship, Chris Orr
K 3D Caricatures, Simon Bingle
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L Fat Cats and other Original drawings, Martin Rowson M Bank, Chris Orr D
N HPC, Chris Orr O Who Done It, Chris Orr P Shredded Books, needs more explanation C
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TITLE: THE LADDER TO, BRONZE SCULPTURE ARTIST: TOM CLARK Tom Clark is a Tasmanian painter and sculptor who honed his skills under the watchful eye of fellow Tasmanian George Davis. He spent a year in London in the 1960s at the City and Guilds of London School of Art, Kennington, in the sculpture studios of James Butler. He has been a full-time artist since 1989. In 1991, he was given a solo show of his bronze sculptures, paintings and drawings at Artarmon Galleries, Sydney. He has since shown works globally. Clark’s pieces are unmistakably of their time and place, in light, colour and subject. His art embraces and accepts ordinary objects and details of life. His piece “The Ladder to” is a faceless statue of a worker climbing a ladder dominates the lobby. The resin figure is a builder but it is not bricks he has hoisted onto his hod, it’s the palace of Westminster. It depicts the representation of power in the hands of the people and the need for people to use politics to climb their way up to success.
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TITLE: EQUANIMOUS 1, PHOTOGRAPH ARTIST: CHRIS LEVINE In 2004, Chris Levine made history when he created “Equanimity”, the first ever 3-D holographic portrait of Queen Elizabeth II as part of his “Lightness of Being” collection to commemorate the Isle of Jersey’s 800th year of allegiance to the Crown. “Equanimous 1” is part of this commission - a holographic portrait, a process that involved an extraordinary technological array: a high-resolution digital camera which moved along a rail taking 200 images over eight seconds, a 3-D data scanner and a medium format camera. The Queen was required to sit still for 8 seconds at a time, and between the passes she closed her eyes to rest. Levine was struck by the beauty of her meditative state and snapped the shutter. A picture like this would have been inconceivable even 20 years ago.
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LONDON WESTMINSTER RELIEF, BRONZE SCULPTURE PETER MILLARD & PARTNERS STUDIO
Step into the luminous lobby and the bronze relief behind the Reception will almost immediately and involuntarily catch your eye. Commissioned by Peter Millard, it displays Westminster with London’s neighbouring boroughs in miniature scale. At first, the bird’s eye view disorientates, but after a moment the distinct forms and shapes get clearer and so the River Thames winds its way through the unmistakable cityscape of the City of London.
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THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS, PAPIER MÂCHÉ & WIRE, ORIGINAL FIGURINES EVIL ROBOTS
Evil Robot Designs was created by UK based artists Evil Ed and Dan Robotic whose aim is to blur the line between geek and cool. Taking elements of film, comic art and popular culture they endeavour to bring these secret loves to life in unexpected form. All their work is designed in-house and, where possible, all materials are sourced locally to create a truly British brand. “The House Always Wins” contains hand-crafted octopus tentacles surrounding the House of Commons. The ‘Speaker’ is surrounded on all sides by a cast of over 150 characters that portray some of modern culture’s most iconic symbols. From Daleks to The Simpsons, Guy Fawkes to Captain Hook, and Hasbro’s Transformers to DC Comics’ Batman blasting through on his Batmobile to aid a host of iconic Marvel heroes and villains, there is always something new to see in this custom centre piece.
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ST JAMES PARK, FLIP LENTICULAR PETER MILLARD & PARTNERS STUDIO, ORIGINAL PAINTING BY LUCA CRESTANI
An original painting has been transformed through the use of lenticular printing techniques to produce an illusion of depth and the ability to flip and animate the winking eyes when viewed from different angles. Walk from one end to the next to get the full effect, as Buckingham Palace and Horse Guards Parade flicker their lights on and off at either end of the park.
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WESTMINSTER I & WESTMINSTER II WATERCOLOUR AND INK AGA MARIA PASTERNAK
Blue Boar features two paintings by this graduate of Central St Martins. The larger work features a hall of fame of 650 Westminster faces. Inspired by the anger, hysteria and back-biting of politics, the piece ‘…looks into the heads…’ of prominent politicians. Aga Maria says of her work; “I was preoccupied with the idea of making private biography public … I do not paint people as they are. I paint them as I feel them to be. This is my private investigation into their character and personality”.
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TITLE: VARIOUS PRINTS ARTIST: GERALD SCARFE CBE A political cartoonist for the London Sunday Times for 44 years, he has also written for the New Yorker magazine for 21 years. After a brief period at the Royal College of Art, he established himself as a satirical cartoonist, working for Punch and Private Eye before he began a long association with the Sunday Times as their political cartoonist. Scarfe has had many exhibitions worldwide and more than 50 one-man-shows, including showcases at the Tate Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and in the House of Commons itself. He has designed sets for plays, operas and musicals, including “Fantastic Mr Fox” and “The Magic Flute”. He also designed and directed the animation sequences for the film of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”. In Blue Boar, we celebrate this London-born heavyweight on the satirical scene, who describes himself as “two different people … carefully polite in society, but vicious at work”.
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TITLE: JUSTICE AND MAYHEM, LITHOGRAPH ARTIST: CHRIS ORR, MBE Chris Orr, Royal Academician and Professor Emeritus, is a painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He was a Professor and Head of the Department of Printmaking at the Royal College of Art. His prints offer a broader commentary on British public life. These detailed works reward those who study closely and see beyond the obvious satisfaction of their intricacy. As Orr’s works show, the great chaos of British life doesn’t just exist in the guilded chambers of Westminster - whether they’re populated by aliens or just middle-aged men. Our politics’ great energetic tumult is actually a mirror of British society itself. Justice and Mayhem was inspired by the London riots of 2011. At the time Orr was reading a Tale of Two Cities by Dickens. Together these conjured up the idea of revolution and social breakdown in two cities and the contrasting powers of justice, order and retribution. The print portrays a dark and dramatic narrative of the mob storming the Bastille and on the left Charles Darnay is being tried at the Old Bailey for treason whilst the Dover mail coach is struggling through the mire in the top left hand corner.
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TITLE: WESTMINSTER COLLAGES, WORKS ON PAPER ARTIST: JULIAN BRAY Julian Bray is an artist who first exhibited in 1993, having nurtured his artistic talent in and around Nottinghamshire and the West Midlands. He was selected for the touring show of The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition in 1994 and has also was included in the Lynn Painter-Stainers touring exhibition to USA in 2006. Bray has had many solo shows at the Harley Gallery in Welbeck, and is a regular exhibitor with the Royal Watercolour Society at Bankside Gallery.
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TITLE: YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS AND HPC ARTIST: CHRIS ORR At Hyde Park Corner are a series of War Memorials. One in particular is important to Orr because he occupies the studio of the sculptor Charles Sargent Jagger who is responsible for the Royal Artillery Memorial. This statue features a dead or sleeping soldier who evokes a real sadness. A walk around Hyde Park led Orr to thoughts about heroism, memory and emotions in an area that is also a picnic and resting place. Like the soldier in high summer people can be seen fast asleep just as though they were bodies on a battlefield. Meanwhile the endless London traffic grinds on.
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TITLE: STATUETTES OF BRITISH POLITICIANS ARTIST: SIMON BINGLE A 1986 graduate of the Camberwell School of Art in 3D Design, Simon Bingle rapidly became one of the UK’s leading prop makers and set designers. He has worked on many advertising campaigns and provided portrait artwork and sculpture for use in theatre and television. For the last ten years, Simon has become a well-known painter and sculptor, working on numerous projects and being shown at exhibitions around the world.
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FAT CATS, ORIGINAL DRAWINGS MARTIN ROWSON ‘CARTOONIST LAUREATE OF LONDON’
A highly contentious artist who likens his political cartooning to voodoo – ‘doing damage from a distance with a sharp instrument’ – Rowson is a self-taught artist who has contributed to most UK national newspapers. His style is visceral and deliberately offensive. He sees himself as following the tradition of 18th century satirists. His resolute vulgarity has courted complaints and resistance from editors, fellow cartoonists and politicians alike. Rowson takes pride in the extent to which his visual satire ‘gets away with telling power that it is stupid, it has a big nose and it should just bugger off.’ He says: “The last thing that politicians in this country can afford to do if they want to get re-elected is to admit they do not have a sense of humour….There is nothing worse than a politician who never appears in a cartoon. Take Alan Milburn – I’ve never drawn him, mostly because I don’t know what he looks like but I doubt very much whether my readers know what he looks like …and he can’t be happy about that.”
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BANK CHRIS ORR
This is one of Chris Orr’s more prophetic prints, unsurprisingly very popular with financiers. Way back in the 1990’s nobody could have imagined a bank collapsing, but there were plenty of scandals of a personal nature, for instance, an underling caught with his trousers down. Orr’s print takes inspiration from Biblical Samson, who managed a last gasp of supreme strength and pulled the Temple down on top of himself. The Architecture in the print has echoes of churches in Venice and the entire Bank is imploding.
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TITLE: WHO DONE IT ARTIST: CHRIS ORR This subject of this print is a grand collision between Murder Mystery Weekends, Cluedo and the English obsession with Detective stories set in Country Houses. In this picture, which has to be read as much as looked at, Orr takes many of the stereotypes of our heritage with all their inherent prejudices and tries to subvert the genre. As of a faintly amusing and theatrical television Country House Murder Mystery is often played with high camp laughter and exaggeration, there are bodies but no visible or disturbing wounds. on the print. Orr leads us tobelieve that the actor will rise again and appear in yet another series in a somewhat similar role. There is no clear victim (except possibly the cat) only a labyrinth of clues and suggestions. Perhaps the print should be subtitled “What did they do?”. Orr’s intention, like most of his work, is that there is much to laugh at from the banister sliding dog (the murderer of the cat?) to the two lovers in one pullover.
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TITLE: SHREDDED BOOKS, PAPER ARTIST: GEORGIA BOYD RUSSELL Georgia Russell is a Scottish artist who slashes, cuts and dissects printed matter, transforming books, music scores, maps, newspapers and photographs. She has already exhibited her unique and contemporary art worldwide, including V&A museum and Centre George Pompidou since she graduated from the Royal College of Art. Through her style, using scalpel instead of pen or brush, she incorporates elements from the original ephemera into the overall scheme of the new piece. Her style includes cutting, rearranging and manipulating the original printed material, such as books. These are sculptural objects to her “representing the many hands which have held them and the minds they have passed through”. She uses something which “holds within it a sense of its own personal history, an object which has a secret life’ and gives them “a new life and new meaning”. Russell’s filigree art pieces in Blue Boar Bar, together with her glass window screen art featured in Cardinal Place, located just a few minutes’ walk away on Victoria Street, create a great individual sense of place in Westminster.
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