As the EU referendum looms later this month, the current issue of The Art Newspaper confirms that this country’s leading contemporary artists are overwhelmingly in favour of Britain remaining within the European Union. And no one more so than Wolfgang Tillmans, who from the start has led the art world campaign against Brexit. The artist has made a series of 26 posters outlining why he believes Britain should stay in the EU, which are available to all.
Certainly the remain message was reverberating with a vengeance at the opening of Tillmans’s show of new and recent work at Maureen Paley last night (10 June). Not only was the artist resplendent in one of his specially designed pro-Europe t-shirts, but his posters were also plastered all over the gallery’s backyard. The gallery stairwell was also full of more posters by fellow remain-ers including Damien Hirst and Michael Craig-Martin, the latter also being there in person. Another prominent presence striding through the show of stunning photographs—many of which also had an access-all-borders theme—was Chris Dercon, the former director of Tate Modern who is shortly to leave these shores to take up the helm of Berlin’s experimental Volksbühne theatre.
Under the circumstances, the ebullient Mr Dercon was especially keen to stress that his UK departure was purely for professional reasons and that he stood shoulder to remain-shoulder with Tillmans, repeatedly declaring to all that his new slogan was, “my exit is NOT a Brexit!” But at both the private view, and the packed St Johns after-party, another exit was on everyone’s lips: namely, that of the Institute of Contemporary Arts’s executive director, Gregor Muir. Earlier in the day Muir had announced that he was relinquishing the ICA to move over to the Tate, where he will take up Frances Morris’s former post of director of collection for international art. This departure came as a shock even to the ICA staffers, who had been blissfully ignorant during the institute’s 70th anniversary gala the night before. And it was perhaps due to the general surprise at this development that Mr Muir himself, usually the life and soul of such events, was last night conspicuous by his absence…