The Art Party Conference – Scarborough 2013

‘Visual Illiteracy’ was performed in collaboration with artist Jackie Haynes at The Art Party Conference in Scarborough, November 2013.

This piece drew upon institutional critique, by walking, blindfolded by oversized ties which were embedded with the message “Thanks Gove…” as a comment upon the letter written to Michael Gove by the artist Bob and Roberta Smith, in which he said:

‘…Art should be at the centre of a National Curriculum based on creative thinking. Pity the obedient child in a system of education obsessed with vocational skills. He or she caves in. The child who becomes inhibited is inducted into the mediocre majority of the visually illiterate, of which you, Michael Gove, (in your ill-fitted shirt and unmatched tie) are a part. ‘

From marching in protest, to drifting along the sea front and ‘pinning’ ties on a donkey, the work is both merry and macabre, and as merciless in spirit as Gove’s onslaught on arts education over the past four years

Mark Hudson reviewed the conference for the Telegraph, and reported:

‘A pair of young women, packed into a single T-shirt with a slogan I couldn’t quite decipher, stumbled blindfolded among an array of depictions of Gove in an extraordinary range of styles and media.’