
At the YPG Gallery…
The Tabloid and The Truth
Anthony Donovan
The YPG Gallery,
Open 11.00 am – 6.00 pm
New digital caricatures and shocking montages that comment upon contemporary international politics.Â
A new series created especially for this Festival in a city which banned The S*n tabloid for its reportage of Hillsborough in 1989, when under its headline ‘The Truth’ it outrageously accused Liverpool fans of urinating on police and pickpocketing dead victims. Anthony creates weird, twisted portraits of hidden monstrous creatures that emerge from inside daily media images to stalk the bloody fields of representation.
This work is conceived in the British tradition of political printmaking harking back to James Gillray and George Cruickshank of the early 1800s. In their form, they are in the tradition of Dada and call back to John Heartfield’s groundbreaking montages, featured in the sister exhibition. Donovan uses the Brechtian conceit of aping the front page of a tabloid, allowing hard-hitting imagery with powerful prose. The serial repetition works to add to the strength of the work.