Iwan Bala’s Controversial Brexit Exhibition

[المشرف العام]

Running*until 30 November at the Penarth Pier Pavilion in Penarth, Wales,*Dyma Gariad (fel y moroedd)/Here is a love (deep as oceans) is an exhibition by*Welsh artist Iwan Bala. It’s an angry, provocative collection of caricatures and maps about Brexit, from a strongly Remain perspective,*done in a style described by the Penarth Times as*“the rapid often stumbled, crossed out, corrected, blotted, re-adjusted rush to put thoughts on paper and the attempt of a poet to capture a line before it ebbs in the memory.”*As the Pavilion describes the exhibition:

Responding to the result of the electorate’s vote on the UK’s EU membership, Bala began to make (alongside politicized ‘maps’), satirical caricatures of the principle [sic] players in the lead up to and result of Brexit. An Artist has a duty to comment, protest and become an agent provocateur through the medium of visual communication. Cartoons have a long and illustrious history, and have always lurked somewhere in the background environs of his artwork.

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They may have been anticipating some pushback—the exhibition also had a content warning—and indeed the exhibition has gotten some angry responses sufficient that the Pavilion had to issue a statement defending their decision to host it. That alone tells me it was a success: art provokes.*[WMS]



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