Signs of the Times Exhibition

During the recent Covid-19 crisis many people connected through art, and used creative ways of staying together as a community. Signs Of The Times is an outdoor billboard exhibition presenting works by artists from around the UK who have made work with powerful messages responding to this time, whilst also offering us inspiration, hope and change.

During the lockdown period, the UK saw a celebration of new poster art and inventive ways of using outdoor spaces. This site-specific exhibition makes use of the outdoor area at Newlyn Art Gallery and is accessible to those who may not be able or wish to visit an indoor gallery space at this time. We hope this exhibition acts as a bold, colourful and hopeful message in Newlyn.

Signs Of The Times includes a selection of poster works from Ore Ahmeed, Morag Myerscough, Dipesh Pandya, Micah Purnell, RTiiiKA, and Mark Titchner

Curated by Debbie Sharp, Programme Producer at Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange.

The works in Signs Of The Times include Please Believe These Days Will Pass by Mark Titchner whose bold and powerful text works were recently part of a major street art project Your Space or Mine by pioneering poster art project Jack Arts. Micah Purnell’s Community Like Never Before and Kindness at its Proper Level  are uplifting visual interventions expressing the ‘gift of community’. Also included is a recently commissioned work, Strength In (Socially Distanced) Numbers by emerging artist Ore Ahmeed, an art student at Falmouth University whose new series Isolation Demoralisation is a colourful exploration of the effects of isolation during lockdown.

Morag Myerscough presents Our Superheroes We Love You which was originally commissioned by In Good Company (Leeds) as a thank you letter to all the frontline workers, and a newly created poster, A New Now. RTiiiKA, who is part of the Rising Arts Agency, leads Bristol Womxn Mural Collective, and curated the #WhoseFuture campaign, is showing a new work No One is Free, which was drawn on the day the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol was toppled. Protect: Ya Neck by Margate-based artist Dipesh Pandya #handsupifyourebrown is a series of four typographic posters that made an important connection as part of many Black Lives Matter campaigns in recent months.”It’s about pride and staying true to your own cultural identity. A protest and an act of resistance to growing global racist and fascist narratives,” said Pandya.