This week has been interesting. After HOME in Manchester pulled a literary celebration of Gazan writing following a complaint from a Jewish lobby group, there was outrage from many people in the city. The weekly peace protest ended up outside the building on Saturday and this week artists in the Manchester Open exhibition came together with the desire to get involved. There was an open letter signed by around 170 artists (there are 480 in the show) and then last night I was among a group of participants of the exhibition who went and took down our work from the walls in protest about the silencing of Palestinian voices. It was a sombre action – it’s a strange feeling taking art out of an exhibition part way through. It put pressure on the bosses at HOME though – it turned the whole thing into a PR disaster for them and today they reinstated the original event. Their apology was somewhat mealy mouthed but still, it’s a result. Their original excuse that they were being politically neutral in cancelling the event was shown to be a nonsense. More here.
