‘Revolution is not a Garden Party’
An international exhibition considering ‘the resonances of social and political revolution in contemporary art against the backdrop of the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising’ opened last week in Norwich (21 March-21 April).
Revolution is not a Garden Party has already exhibited at the Trafó House of Contemporary Arts in Budapest and Manchester Metropolitan University’s Holden Gallery, and will move to Galerija Miroslav Kraljević in Zagreb in mid-June.
The exhibition consists of new and recent works that examine the global economic and political context against which revolutions take place, as well as the intersection between personal and artistic heritages of revolution. It expresses the sorrow of failed political struggles in the past and the future, and considers the shared experience of a communist past and the post-communist reality. Other concerns include the experience of revolutionary literature, the gendered images of resistance fighters in contemporary media, and the legacy of 1956 for the relationship of art and revolution.
The exhibition features videos, installations and and photography by artists from Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy and the UK. Admission is free.
A conference took place in September last year at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London, organised by Professor Martyn Rady and Emeritus Professor László Péter, which explored the history of resistance, rebellion and revolution in Central Europe, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, although with an emphasis on the modern period and, appropriate to the fiftieth anniversary, on the 1956 Revolution and its legacy.