Rude Britannia: British Comic Art at Tate Britain on artrepublic.com

Through a great diversity of art forms – including painting, drawing, sculpture, film and photography – comedy, the comic, and visual humour will be explored in their many dimensions.  The exhibition will be presented and interpreted by some of the country’s best-known cartoonists and comedy writers including Steve Bell, Harry Hill, Gerald Scarfe, and the team at Viz Magazine. Their expertise and opinion will offer visitors a fresh take on comic traditions from the 1600s to the present day, and encourage debate around the wider role of humour in British life. 

Drawing on material far beyond the traditional realm of visual satire, Rude Britannia will bring together sculptures, installations and performances. Works by contemporary artists such as Angus Fairhurst will be contrasted with key historical pieces by Gillray and Cruikshank. Radio, film and new media will play a part in the show, reflecting how technological developments have consistently reinvigorated the genre and engaged new audiences. 

Rude Britannia will focus on a group of key topics, devised in collaboration with the guest curators. These will show the wide variety of ways in which Britain’s thriving tradition of comic art has taken shape, and the links between comic practices of the past and present. Donald McGill’s saucy seaside postcards will be shown alongside works by Aubrey Beardsley and Sarah Lucas, in a section devoted to all things bawdy. Meanwhile, Britain’s love of the absurd and the visionary will be represented by such diverse material as Edward Lear’s illustrations and David Shrigley’s sculpture. Politics, social commentary and morality will each be explored, from Hogarth’s satires of Georgian society to Gerald Scarfe’s caricatures of the Thatcher government. 

Celebrating the vivid history of comical images, the exhibition will ask some provocative questions about humour in the visual arts: Is satire truly effective as a means of political messaging? What role have cartoons played in spreading and reinforcing prejudice? Are some things in life truly beyond a joke? Rude Britannia will explore these and other complex issues, reflecting the way that changing social attitudes and identity politics have always played an important role in both comedy and art history. 

OPENING HOURS: Daily: 10.00-17.50

Image Credits:

Gerald Scarfe, Ptorydactyl 1989, © Gerald Scarfe

Photo op (Signed Limited Edition of 750) © kennardphillipps