Activist Art exhibited in Conscience and Conflict Exhibition

The collective activist art project, Re-making Picasso's Guernica, involving from its outset two years ago staff in the College of Arts and Humanities, will form part of a new exhibition of the art of the Spanish Civil War. Re-Making Picasso’s Guernica, a textile version of Pablo Picasso's famous painting of the bombing of a small Basque village, will be exhibited in Conscience and Conflict: British Artists and the Spanish Civil War at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. 

Re-Making Picasso’s Guernica was initiated at a meeting hosted by the Design History and Material Culture Research Group (DHMCRG) in the Centre for Research and Development (Arts) in June 2012. Nicola Ashmore and Megha Rajguru, who collaborated on the documentation and analysis of the project in a series of conference papers presented in Ahmedabad, London and Oxford worked as practitioners alongside Louise Purbrick and former colleagues Jill and Peter Seddon. The work of College of Arts and Humanities staff can be considered exemplary for its use of art practice to develop relationships between the university and communities and between academics, artists and activists.

From the initial meetings to the final stitches upon the cloth, Re-making Picasso’s Guernica involved local representatives of peace, human rights and anti-racist groups, including Amnesty International, Women’s League for Peace and Freedom, Migrant English Project and Gatwick Detainee Welfare Group.These relationships sustained a wider engagement with communities through a series of public sewings at libraries, social centres, meeting halls and art galleries. Phoenix Gallery, Brighton in particular, supported the project throughout its making. As the textile piece neared completion, it was carried as a banner at anti-war and anti-fascist protests.

Whilst the exhibition of the Re-Making Picasso’s Guernica marks an important moment in the life of the work, the dialogue it created about art as a process and as an act of participation, is set to continue when it passes back to participating community groups once Conscience and Conflict: British Artists and the Spanish Civil War closes at Pallant House Gallery.