It’s freshers’ week in Coventry. A student chamber choir is playing outside Warwick Arts Centre’s Mead Gallery as I arrive – an unintended but serendipitous entry to the British Art Show 10. The unexpected collisions of sounds, images and media continue throughout the three-venue, 37-artist strong exhibition curated by Ekow Eshun.
The British Art Show is an unwieldy thing. The UK’s largest recurring contemporary art exhibition, the quinquennial survey of British art’s inaugural edition took place in Sheffield in 1979 – 112 artists were shown, including Frank Bowling, Lucian Freud and David Hockney. It is intended as a survey of British art now – all the works were made in the last five years, and all the artists are identified as British. What constitutes British, and what British art actually means, are both knotty questions in the current political context.
