Helen Cammock Withdraws Work from National Portrait Gallery, London
The piece’s withdrawal follows controversy surrounding its statement that Winston Churchill had intentionally starved the Indian population during the 1943 Bengal famine
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Helen Cammock. Photo: Thierry Bal, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
The artist Helen Cammock has withdrawn a video work, Persistence (2022), from the Artists First: Contemporary Perspectives on Portraiture exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery, reported the BBC. Cammock’s withdrawal follows controversy surrounding its statement that Winston Churchill had intentionally starved the Indian population during the 1943 Bengal famine.
In a statement, the artist said: ‘There is an incredible pressure on artists and arts institutions to bend to external pressure; to be benign at best and silent at worst… I do not accept this pressure. To question, challenge and explore ideas and histories is vital to a healthy society and art is intrinsic to this.’
The video work had been denounced earlier this month by Craig Simpson in The Telegraph, who argued that it formed an ‘attack on British leaders’. This provoked an open letter to the National Portrait Gallery, published by Churchill’s biographer, citing the falsity of Cammock’s statements. This was signed by over fifty people.
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