See the Creative Ways Artists Are Urging Britons to Vote (Against Boris Johnson) in Today’s General Election

As
polling stations opened this morning across the UK, artists took to
social media to urge people to use their vote wisely. Boris Johnson
may be the darling of much of Britain’s highly partisan media (and
President Trump’s preference), but in the art world few have spoken
out to support his re-election as the UK’s prime
minister.

Johnson and his campaign strategists believe
that their “Get Brexit Done” message, a sort of British version of
Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” will deliver a Conservative
Party majority. His opponents hope otherwise, and some have been
using their creativity to say so. 

The
sculptor Antony Gormley did not pull any punches when he wrote to
the Guardian
this week explaining why he was
definitely not voting for Johnson. “I am tired of [his] blustery rhetoric, lazy
policymaking and mendacious, cuddly Churchill act,” Gormley wrote,
urging people to vote for Labour Party candidate Jeremy Corbyn in
order to stymie Johnson. Fellow sculptor Anish Kapoor posted on
Instagram a concise, if downbeat, message. Noting the increase in
social inequality over the past decade, Kapoor says: “In spite of
the fact that I am one of the advantaged few, I will be voting
Labour in the forthcoming election. Please join
me.” 

The
art historian and broadcaster Bendor Grosvenor is a former
Conservative member who will be voting for the Scottish National
Party or SNP. He posted a low-budget “political broadcast” urging
people to vote tactically in order to thwart Johnson and a hard
Brexit. Grosvenor points out that Scotland voted to Remain in the
2016 European Referendum, and its MPs could hold a balance of power
in the next Parliament. Posted on Twitter on Tuesday, the video
quickly attracted more than 45,000 views. Speaking to the camera in
a field as rain pours down, Grosvenor delivers an upbeat message,
predicting “warm and sunny weather, just like this” on polling
day. 

Collage artist Christopher Spencer, also known
as Cold War Steve, has satirized via Twitter and Instagram
Johnson’s election campaign, highlighting widely reported dubious
practices, disinformation, and gaffes. On Wednesday, the artist
showed the politician sitting naked in an old fridge. That morning,
Johnson, a serial avoider of journalists’ questions, ducked into
the cold store of a milk dairy while a press officer moved the
reporter out of the way, swearing as he did it, on live
TV. 

Spencer will be speaking about his work, which
was featured on the cover of Time magazine’s Brexit-themed edition this summer,
on election night. The event takes place at the Bristol-based
foundation of Martin Parr, the Magnum photographer who is a
self-described “Remoaner.” Ahead of election day, Parr’s foundation
posted images shot outside the Houses of Parliament. All show
anti-Brexit campaigners.

The
Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Leckey added an image of the
Labour Party’s red-rose symbol to stills from his prize-winning
video Fiorucci Made Me
Hard Core (1999). His
post on Instagram earlier this week included the blunt message:
“Vote Labour this Thursday FFS.”

Leckey
was born near Liverpool in the North West of England and grew up in
the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister and the
Conservative Party seemed invincible, although deeply unpopular in
big northern cities. The Labour Party’s other traditional
strongholds in the North are being aggressively targeted by
Johnson. His Brexit-by-January promise has, according to many
opinion polls, found a receptive audience among working-class Leave
voters. 

The Conservatives have
supporters in high places in the British art world, although none
have been vocal so far about backing Johnson. The Victoria and
Albert Museum’s chair of trustees, Nicholas Coleridge, has donated
to the party’s coffers ahead of the election. In his new
autobiography, The Glossy
Years, Coleridge,
formerly president of Condé Nast International, provides a pen
portrait of Johnson in action when he was the Mayor of London and
Johnson wanted a new museum in East London to be a cross between
the British Museum, the V&A in South Kensington, and a
Babylonian Palace. His anxious aids treated Johnson “as though he
was the slightly wilful eight-year-old of a maharaja, who need
humouring,” Coleridge recalls. Nevertheless, Coleridge describes
his fellow old Etonian as “PM hotshot (2019)” in a
footnote.

On Friday, that date in brackets
might need extending, if he returns as is expected to Number 10
Downing Street.

Here are more heartfelt posts
from a hard-fought election.

The post See the Creative Ways Artists Are Urging Britons to
Vote (Against Boris Johnson) in Today’s General Election
appeared first on artnet News.