State Britain
Brian Haw began protesting
outside the Houses of Parliament on the second of June 2001 against economic
sanctions imposed upon Iraq. He has lived on Parliament Square protesting ever
since. Surrounded by banners, an ever-growing collection of protest materials
and interested passers by Brian has said that he will stay “As long as
it takes”. He is now protesting about a huge range of issues all in the
hope of bringing about peace and justice.
His devotion is obsessive and he will not go away no matter how hard the British
government wish he would. So much so that they passed a law drastically changing
our rights as British individuals to protest; one section of the ‘Serious
Organised Crime and Policing act’ (SOCAP) is seen by some as a law introduced
largely with the intent of removing Brian from his position of protest.
Section 132 of this act states that prior authorisation is now necessary for
protest within 1km of the Houses of Parliament; there has been a lot of legal
activity going back and forth which eventually led to “a much criticised
operation costing £28,000 and involving 78 police officers, Brian's display
was unceremoniously dismantled with no warning in the dead of night. With the
exception of a few placards and some personal possessions everything, including
art works of significant value, personal items belonging to Brian and supporters,
legal papers and 5 year's worth of testimony to the horrors of this government's
foreign policy, was unceremoniously pushed into a huge container.”(www.parliament-square.org.uk)
When I originally saw the protest a few years ago in its free and uncontested
form stretched along the width of Parliament Square, I was impressed at Brian’s
dedication and saw the objects as mere means to an end of effecting political
opinion. I spoke to Brian, I can’t remember the conversation exactly but
I’m fairly sure that he spoke about the shame Tony Blair should feel regarding
Iraq, explained why he was there and that what little protesting I was doing
was brilliant and that the last thing I should do was give up hope. I’ve
heard other people say that speaking to him they found a man far from sane,
an angry man, but always a passionate man that people admire.
Mark Wallinger is an artist I know next to nothing about. He is almost fifty,
was one of the less flamboyant YBAs, went to Chelsea and carried on with Fine-Art
degrees doing an MA at Goldsmiths from 1983-85. He didn’t get the Turner
Prize in 1995; Damien Hirst beat him to it. He is also responsible for the recent
installation sited at Tate Britain.
The Tate website says he is concerned with the responsibilities of the individual
in his work and that his primary concern is to establish valid critical approach
to ‘politics of representation and the representation of politics’.
I don’t really understand what this means but what he has done in the
Tate Britain lately is very exciting.
Curated by Clarrie Wallis, Mark Wallinger has painstakingly recreated all of
the stolen protest material from Brian’s protest pitch. Wallingers recreation
is installed in the Duveen Gallery at Tate Britain. Entitled State Britain the
recreated banners, teddy bears, posters, placards, letters and even a large
canvas by Banksy stretch across the great length of the gallery, roughly halfway
along the gallery a black line on the floor, dissects the work with a slight
curve. I’ve read that it continues in all other rooms throughout the entire
building. If we take the 1km distance from the Houses of Parliament to be literal
the line shows where the perimeter of illegal protest begins. The work ignores
the line and stands proudly on both sides of the line like a defiant child stepping
where it has been told it mustn’t.
Wallingers meticulous recreation presents us with a work that is not about the
process of recreation, they have been recreated, and indeed the whole piece
has occurred because of the removal of the original protest objects. They have
become artefacts now recreated, instead of existing as mere means to an end.
By removing the items the art world has responded almost dutifully by saying;
‘Hold on a minute, you can’t do that!’ What wasn’t too
well known has had far more media coverage as a result of this piece coming
into existence.
The installation is displayed without comment on what Brian is saying, none
of this has been changed, the truth or accuracy of what he claims in his protest
is not commented upon, his protest is quoted accurately in this piece without
paraphrasing or correcting or clarifying any of what he says. Without this honesty
the work would fall flat on its face. The piece is as far as possible entirely
neutral to what Brian is saying. As a project that an artist has overseen; it
is a response to the silencing of what one man wants to say. Not a reiteration
or emphasis of his stated beliefs. The piece is making a statement about the
recent changes in law and the line on the floor draws an illustration upon the
rest of the work in a similar aggressive tone that the title implies.
I’ve always thought that the Tate was very safe and rarely stirred up
actual trouble or controversy. But displaying a work in a potentially illegal
manner is a hugely brave thing for such an institution to do, openly disobeying
new law or at least seeming to in the face of oppressive laws is greatly admirable
and I am impressed by this.
It could be contended that it is not protest; it is art. Or that the Tate is
a building open to the public, but not a public space in the eyes of the law;
rendering freedom of speech within it irrelevant to enforcing law. But do these
criticisms of State Britain really matter? The Tate Britain is on the perimeter,
and there are indeed items, which display messages of protest, so half of it
is an illegal protest. For the Tate to be openly objecting to these new laws
it is maturely acknowledging the needs of art and making a statement that it
will not comply.
This artwork does not really exist in the Tate. The objects we are presented
with are representations of what existed before. What they represent in their
recreated form only further emphasises what threat freedom of speech is under,
it is through these new objects’ reassigned history that we find the narrative
of Brian and the British Government. Where the remakes are now located and the
fact that they are remakes is a triumph for art. Mark Wallinger the Tate and
everyone creatively involved in this project has reminded me of our duty as
artists to protect freedom of speech, and also that without it we can’t
do an awful lot.
Bibliography.
http://www.tate.org.uk/
http://dictionary.reference.com/
http://www.independent.co.uk/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
http://www.parliament-square.org.uk/
Copyright Tom Duggan. 2007.