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Plastic bags and mud art join Whitehall old masters
By Nicole Martin
(Filed: 17/01/2005) The walls of Government offices are usually adorned with traditional oil paintings and portraits. However, pictures of empty carrier bags and mud smeared on paper could now appear alongside works by Gainsborough and Hogarth.
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Grayson Perry with his work at Tate Britain after winning the Turner Prize in 2003
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They are among more than 50 works of art that have been bought by the Government Art Collection (GAC) in the past two years to hang in Whitehall offices and British embassies around the world. The new purchases, estimated to be worth about £400,000, also feature work by young British artists Gavin Turk, Chris Ofili and Grayson Perry, a transvestite potter and former Turner Prize winner with a penchant for pornographic imagery. Among the works most likely to raise eyebrows is a set of prints featuring plastic bags from grocery stores and a chip shop. It is part of Carrier Bag Top Ten, by Stephen Palmer, a conceptual artist. A list of the GAC's new works of art emerged in response to a parliamentary question last week by Lord Hanningfield, a Tory peer. He said: "I think we should support young British artists but there are one or two odd pieces of work in the collection that maybe should not have been bought by the public purse. "I think they would be better suited in galleries or in private collections rather than in Government offices." Other works in the collection likely to fuel the debate on what constitutes art is Other Careers that Begin with A, a one-page screenprint list by Colin Lowe and Roddy Thomson. It could grace the wall of a ministerial office alongside River Avon Mud Drawings by Richard Long, who uses mud from the Avon to create his pictures. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which funds the GAC, said a panel of experts was responsible for selecting works to appear in Government buildings in Britain and abroad. "They include people from the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate. The panel has a record of backing winners," a spokesman said. "The rationale is to promote Britain and reflect its history, culture and creativity in the visual arts. In general, works are acquired by as wide a range of artists as possible, by artists with a strong British connection, with particular historical, modern or geographical associations with a specific Government building or host country." The spokesman added that the GAC received an annual grant of £551,000, of which £200,000 is spent on commissions and acquisitions. Works of art are displayed in several hundred locations, including Downing Street, ministerial offices and reception areas in Whitehall, and diplomatic posts in locations as diverse as Paris, Buenos Aires, Washington and Beijing. Dating from 1898, the GAC holds about 12,000 works of art, including paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, textiles and video works, from the sixteenth century to the present day. Artists represented in the collection include John Constable and Lucian Freud. |