A teenager’s comeback to a virtual Government Art Collection
When I was 14, I found myself being dragged from my weekend spot of Westfield Shopping Centre, frozen frappucino and Topshop bag still in hand, to an Open House event at the Government Art Collection. Headphones still on while listening to Britney, I caught half of what my parents were radiantly explaining to me in the car....I’ll be totally honest - as always with you - I was not thrilled by the prospect!
Before we continue, let me explain what my parents tried to get across about Open House and Government Art Collection and hopefully you’ll be more interested than I was when I was younger - Listening to Britney whilst reading this is totally allowed however! Open House is actually a brilliant initiative where important public buildings all over London, not usually accessible to the person on the street, are made accessible. From Downing Street to Benjamin Franklin House, anyone can go and have a snoop around.
The Government Art Collection is the British national collection of 14,000 artworks that is displayed in 155 locations in 129 capital cities in 365 buildings. The role in cultural diplomacy is huge and it serves as a brilliant cultural resource that has been collecting works of art for over 120 years with 2/3 of its works are on display at any given time.
So anyway, we get out of the car and walk into the Government Art Collection and begin our guided tour. My foul mood began to dissipate and I became transfixed. As we were led around, the power of art actively shaping the world around me and commenting on how we all lived became clearer and clearer. Here were the works of art that provided the backdrop to the political conversations that shape the world. For the first time in my 14 years, that I had some kind of tangible understanding of how one could change just a little bit of the world.
Imagine you are a government official, meeting a diplomat or minister from a place you may never have been to, with different cultural values, with perhaps different political ideals. Where do you begin? How do you begin? How do you find a common thread to tie you together? You look around you, and you see a great conversation begin in the form of the artwork standing in front of you both.
The artworks go beyond even this; they aren’t just flies on the walls, privy to important conversations, they actively inform and promote the UK’s cultural values.
We then got led down into the storage units and I could not contain my excitement. This was when I realised what my version of heaven looks like; thousands of artworks stacked like books in shelves which you can spend hours looking through, hearing the stories each work holds, and just sitting there surrounded by someone’s depiction of something you thought totally ordinary, now coming alive.
It really stayed with me. I knew - above anything else - that when I grew up I needed to make sure I had a job where I could sit in rooms like these, to find a new way of looking, and to show others. I think it’s really important that as many people as possible get to see what I saw, and maybe they will feel what I felt.
10 years later, this dream is realised on theVOV, where a huge number of audiences can now see the Government Art Collection in virtual reality on their phones and tablets. We are presenting works of art acquired by Outset and the Robson Orr TenTen Award and Acquisitions Fund adding diverse and underrepresented artists representing the most current cultural values of the UK to this most impressive and hard-working collection. Now, in the most stunning virtual technology.
In our Robson Orr TenTen gallery on theVOV, you can see the unveiling of this year’s commission. It sits impressively alongside the previous years’ awardees, Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, Tacita Dean and Hurvin Anderson, and forms already a nice collection of its own joining further acquisitions of works by Robin Maginnity, Louise Giovanelli, Martine Poppe, Matthew Krishanu, Sonia Boyce, Joy Labinjo, Larry Achiampong, Khadija Saje made possible by the Government Art Collection / Outset Acquisition Fund.
You can learn more about these works by visiting them on theVOV in our virtual gallery, anytime, anywhere, and stay tuned for a curator tour with GAC’s Eliza Gluckman.
There is now no longer just one special day a year when the doors open, but every day, at the click of a button you can experience the soft power of these diplomatic artworks added to the Government Art Collection. It seems a big thank you is in order to my parents for taking me to the collection all those years ago.
with love, from Lottie @theVOV