'Wet Paint 2': Visual culture in a changing Britain - a roundtable debate

Towards the end of 2014 the previous editor of Visual Culture in Britain invited a variety of authors to contribute a page or two to a roundtable discussion on a variety of political and cultural events and changes. We solicited contributions from representatives of the British Universities, the Museum sector and Research Centres to respond to this idea of a changing Britain through the prism of British art and visual culture, using cogent examples wherever possible, and bringing to the fore the authors observations, understandings and positions within this rapidly developing context. For the re-launch of Visual Culture in Britain, the editors have invited, via the same process we went through in 2014, amounting to a series of ‘reflections on Visual Culture in Britain now, the role of journal to address some of these reflections, especially in an era of political upheaval and economic duress. To this end, what does Britain look like and how do we see these shifting landscapes through a multiplicity of mediums.’ This covers, of course, a sometime dramatic and often troubling context including, for example, the manipulation of Brexit, the murder of Jo Cox, the fire in Grenfell Tower, the escalation of Russian attacks in UK and elsewhere, the fires in the cathedral of Notre Dame and The Glasgow School of Art, Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson’s leaderships, Coronavirus, lockdown, protestors’ removal of the statue of Edward Colston, the death or downfall of UK monarchical figures, 2021’s warmest New Year’s Eve on record and so on. Any tone was admissible, rhetorical, humorous, discursive, contemplative, argumentative etc…