What’s this? They’ve been taking our money and spending it on art? Not even letting us have a look? Thank good breeding and good manners that Mr Cameron has come along to show us what’s rightfully ours, though in the spirit of the Big Society there really should be an admission charge. Yes, it’s the Government Art Collection, the cream of British art amassed on our behalf over the past 100-odd years and divvied up between government buildings and embassies around the world. That accounts for two thirds of the 13,500-strong haul; the rest resides in a storage facility in Tottenham Court Road (a street we at Time Out have long known to be the centre of the universe).
The first of five exhibitions scheduled back-to-back until September 2012, ‘At Work’ features the selections of various political and diplomatic figures, and Samantha Cameron, who have chosen some of the paintings, prints, photographs and sculptures with which they have shared their offices and homes. It’s as coherent a hang as you would expect from a centuries-wide selection by seven non-specialist ‘curators’. But what’s on show was only ever going to be as interesting as who chose it, and why, and here the opportunities for character analysis are a bigger draw than what’s on the walls.
What, for instance, to make of Peter Mandelson who, in his selection of an anonymous portrait of Elizabeth I, has plumped for one of the jewels of the collection? Adding David Dawson’s photograph of ‘Lucian Freud painting the Queen’ (2001) and a sculpture of the artist and courtier Peter Paul Rubens to his list, Mandy appears to be using art to reflect his ambitions as well as taste.
Nick Clegg has also chosen Dawson’s photo, but more revealing is his selection of the wistful, if rather meagre escapism encapsulated by David Tindle’s painting ‘Tea’ (1970-71). We might think of SamCam as being merely on message in her choice of LS Lowry’s ‘Lancashire Fair: Good Friday, Daisy Nook’ (1946), with its patina of populist cheer. But, since the Lowry was in Downing Street when the Camerons arrived, perhaps its presence indicates a changing of the guard, or is even a dig at Cameron’s predecessor. Or maybe Mrs Cameron just likes the picture.
Future shows – Simon Schama and Cornelia Parker are among the selectors – will undoubtedly be more focused affairs. This odd little gathering is more about what art says versus what it can be made to say. Its centrepiece ought to be a Damien Hirst spin painting.