Cartoon exhibition cancelled after art deemed too political

Is the era of political satire over? The Kingston Riverside TownSq venue seems to think so. It transpires that the Surrey events space has cancelled an exhibition of political cartoonists’ work called Licence to Offend in case, er, anyone was offended. You couldn’t make it up…

The showing featured work from celebrated newspaper cartoonists including the Spectator’s JG Fox, Morten Morland, also formerly of the Spectator, the Mail’s Mac and Pugh, and the Guardian’s Martin Rowson. The event, organised by photographer Paul Mowatt and artist Zoe Dorelli, was to display dozens of cartoons ranging across the political spectrum to the public after its private viewing on Wednesday evening in Kingston. Yet their hopes were dashed after the venue contacted the duo and ordered them to ‘take down the show immediately after our private view,’ according to Dorelli. Since then, the private viewing has been cancelled too – just hours before it was to take place this evening. She told Mr S:

I think when they saw it, they just thought it would be too offensive to the people working there, and they decided to pull the show. The cartoonists are pretty upset about being cancelled – it’s not often that they get to have actual exhibitions. They do everything under extraordinary pressure in a very short space of time. I just think it’s incredible and requires it requires a lot of respect.

Unfortunately, the venue hadn’t factored in the fact that all the cartoonists work for national newspapers. It’s very unwise to annoy a cartoonist.

You can say that again! The artists have made no bones about their displeasure at the development. Rob Murray, whose work has been published by Private Eye and the Sunday Times, blasted the decision as ‘ridiculous’, adding that it is ‘sadly not the first time a few of us have been censored/cancelled by local council types’. Mac meanwhile slammed the move as ‘crazy’, remarking: ‘In bygone days satire used to be absolutely savage, but suddenly we can’t express any opinions. The powers that be, with this gallery, said they were involved with different councils and didn’t want to offend anybody. It is weird because the vast majority of the works have already been scrutinised and passed by editors and published in national newspapers.’ Quite.

For its part, the TownSq Kingston venue said of their decision that: ‘Whilst we have not felt the exhibition was offensive, Kingston Riverside is a workspace, and our policy is to remain politically neutral. Once we were made aware that the art is not in keeping with a professional workspace, we respectfully asked the artists to remove them after the exhibition. We are still allowing the artists to hold their exhibition at the space for free, but the current art will not remain in place later.’ It’s all rather baffling…

Dorelli says that despite TownSq’s approach, she has high hopes that another venue will permit the cartoon showing to go ahead. The artist told Steerpike: ‘I’m hoping like all this press will hopefully benefit us in the sense that we can get a really good venue, maybe in town, maybe connected to one of the newspapers.’ Get your bids in quick…