We The People Are the Work

The project built connections between the people of Plymouth and internationally renowned artists Claire Fontaine, Peter Liversidge, Antonio Vega Macotela and Eduardo Thomas, Ciara Phillips and Matt Stokes, through structures that involved people living in Plymouth in generating the artworks in the exhibition alongside the artists.

Venues across the city ranging from Plymouth City Council’s Council House to the city’s public galleries were animated by a series of new commissioned artworks that explored our engagement with politics and identity. In the wake of recent global events – from Brexit, to the election of Donald Trump as the new president of the United States, to the recent UK general election – the exhibition explored both the shared experiences and social difference that shape our society and our aspirations and fears for the future.

The commissioned artworks are concerned with ideas of articulation and power – how do we as individuals, as the public, get our voices heard within or against the structures of power that govern our lives and claim to speak for us, the people?

MIRROR (previously The Gallery at Plymouth College of Art) supported the development, and presented the work of Matt Stokes.