Skip to main content
Regional secretary with the National Education Union
Best of 2018: Visual arts
BY CHRISTINE LINDEY
Urgent message: Forensic Architecture's Killing in Umm al-Hiran

IN 2018, the continuing revival of interest in progressive politics was reflected in artists’ and curators’ greater openness to serious themes.

After being almost forgotten for many decades, the prints of Frank Brangwyn were brought to a new audience by Brighton Museum. 

Brangwyn intended his print series to be widely accessible by being much cheaper than unique paintings and his powerful depictions of dockers, shipbuilders, boot makers, woodcutters and bottle washers, while exposing their harsh conditions, honoured their labour without idealisation or sentimentality.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
James Boswell, Two studies of a man with a chain through his
Exhibition Review / 7 November 2024
7 November 2024
CHRISTINE LINDEY welcomes a fascinating survey of the work of the communist and socialist artists who founded the AIA in the 1930s
Gabriele Münter, Portrait of Marianne von Werefkin, 1909; L
Exhibition review / 28 June 2024
28 June 2024
CHRISTINE LINDEY guides us through the vivid expressionism of a significant but apolitical group of pre WWI artists in Germany
(L-R) Joshua Reynolds’ Portrait of George, Prince of Wales
Exhibition review / 7 March 2024
7 March 2024
CHRISTINE LINDEY salutes an outstanding exhibition imbued with a sense of national guilt
(L) Synchromy with F.B. - General of hot desire (1968-69); (
Exhibition Review / 22 November 2023
22 November 2023
CHRISTINE LINDEY surveys the cosmopolitan, enigmatic compositions of an idiosyncratic artist whose work speaks of mystery and exile
Similar stories
biennale
Liverpool Biennale 2025 / 17 June 2025
17 June 2025

SYLVIA HIKINS casts an eye across the contemporary art brought to a city founded on colonialism and empire

(L to R) Vincent van Gogh, Bedroom in Arles, 1889; Hew Locke
Culture / 30 December 2024
30 December 2024
From van Gogh to Sonia Boyce, from Hew Locke to Patrick Carpenter and... Pablo Picasso
James Boswell, Two studies of a man with a chain through his
Exhibition Review / 7 November 2024
7 November 2024
CHRISTINE LINDEY welcomes a fascinating survey of the work of the communist and socialist artists who founded the AIA in the 1930s
Peter Kennard, (L) The Gamble, 1986; (R) Protest and Survive
Exhibition Review / 23 August 2024
23 August 2024
JAN WOOLF applauds art that has not only documented the anti-war and anti-capitalist movement but been an integral part of it