The Art Newspaper

The UK general election on 4 July has repeatedly been cast as a reckoning. Since the Conservative party came to power in 2010, the country has faced one crisis after another. It is what the 2023 Turner Prize winner Jesse Darling homed in on with hazard tape, broken columns of reinforced concrete and kettling-style pedestrian barriers. His winning installation, Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain, said, was a “state of the nation” address, an assessment of modern Britain. The public spending cuts imposed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis severely impacted the provision of social housing, social care, and have been linked with ballooning NHS waiting lists. Covid, Brexit and the cost-of-living and energy crises have compounded this tumult, leaving more and more councils unable to fully fund their statutory duties, let alone discretionary, culture spending. When it comes to the art community, Mark Wallinger, another Turner Prize-winning artist, says, “the charge sheet for the Tories is lengthy”. He lists: “the loss of the arts as a central part of the school curriculum, the woeful underfunding of the arts (with art schools and museums struggling), the knock-on effects of Brexit, the continual sniping and threats to the BBC, the merry-go-round of different culture secretaries”. Tap the link in our bio to read more