Government Art Collection: At Work - Whitechapel Gallery

The Government Art Collection is the largest, most dispersed, collection of British art in the world, featuring over 13,500 works spanning five centuries. It is displayed in British Government building throughout the world and is a resource from which government ministers, ambassadors etc can choose the art they would like for their office or official residence.


Government Art Collection: At Work features work selected by seven public figures among them Nick Clegg, Lord Mandelson, Lord Boateng and Ed Vaisey. The works in the exhibition are varied in age, style etc, but I found myself going into the exhibition with pre-conceived notions of what I wanted to find, i.e. easy to pigeon hole selections which justify my expectations, so the Tories should select grand older pieces, portraits of 'great men' or landscapes of ye olde England and Labour figures should select slightly more daring, up-to-date works and hopefully Nick Clegg would select pieces you hate. But the pieces selected defy easy categorisation.
The first picture I saw as I walked into the gallery was a picture by Osmund Caine of soldiers in barracks during the Second World War which Lord Boateng tells us 'operates on so many levels' and straight away my pretentious alarm went off. But then his next two choices are the striking 'Peas are the New Beans' by Bob & Roberta Smith and a drawing called 'Jazz Fans' by Edward Burra and you warm towards Boateng for his choices. Nick Clegg is not everyone's cup of Darjeeling at the moment but one of the works he chose, a photo taken by Zarina Bhimji (below) on her first trip back to Uganda after she and her family had fled as political refugees is both beautiful and thought provoking.

The same with Mandelson, he chooses a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I as you might expect but then he also chooses a lovely painting by Cecil Stephenson done for the Festival of Britain in 1950. Ed Vaizey, the Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries has chosen perhaps the most cutting edge works, a couple of prints by Tracey Emin and possibly my favourite work in the exhibition 'Compulsory Obsolescence' by Michael Landy (below) which records some of the public and press reactions to his previous work 'Break Down' when he destroyed all his possessions, an act to provoke fear, horror and disbelief in our consumer obsessed, materialistic society. Imagine no possessions indeed! Oh and btw - you can pick up the book that goes with the exhibition in the Whitechapel Gallery bookshop on the way out.

An interesting exhibition although unfortunately I'm a bit late getting to it as it closes on Sunday 4th September. However it is the first of five displays of works from the Government art collection that will be shown at the Whitechapel over the coming months so if you don't manage to catch this one look out for future shows.