Twenty Twenty At The New Walsall Art Gallery

Twenty Twenty. 2020. A horror of a year. A horror story brought to life. A global pandemic hit, a lockdown ensued, families separated from loved ones for months on end, children not able to go to school, a work from home notice, panic buying in the supermarkets of everything from toilet rolls to pasta, Captain Tom Moore stealing the nation’s hearts, clapping for the NHS every Thursday night. It was a surreal time, a time of the most glorious spring weather we had seen in years, but a stay at home notice for all. No one will ever forget 2020. No one there will ever want to relive it.

This Spring the New Art Gallery in Walsall put a call out for local artists who had produced art work during this tumultuous time. Work that chronicled the pandemic and our response to it, but also to the other issues that dominated the year, the Black Lives Matter movement and Brexit. Life had never seemed so unpredictable, so uncertain, so shorn of hope for so many, what creativity would this period unleash?

The Twenty Twenty exhibition is the result. A mixture of paintings, photographs, slogans and polaroids, it really captures the mood of that ever strange, troubled year, and yet still has flashes of humour coming through. Tributes to the NHS, the puzzlement that shows in the ‘I always bake bread’ images, the empty shelves, the zoom and WhatsApp calls to grandparents, the rainbows, it is all there. Many of the images are just so poignant, transporting you right back to the height of the pandemic, to following an arrow around a supermarket, to standing on a marker in order to be served, to all that craziness of that uncertain time.

If you only go and see one exhibition this year, then make it Twenty Twenty. Thought provoking, humbling, harrowing and poignant, it sums up every emotion of that historic year.

Twenty Twenty Collection

14 January – 28 August 2022

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