Introducing Rakewell, Apollo’s wandering eye on the art world. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories
One of the less conventional campaigns to grace the billboards of British cities in recent months has come courtesy of Led by Donkeys, an anti-Brexit pressure group. The posters feature inflated screen grabs of tweets, and other statements photo-shopped into the Twitter format, by pro-Brexit politicians and public figures – drawing attention to the reverse-ferreting that has been a staple of recent years.
‘You won’t be surprised to hear that we haven’t necessarily asked permission to put them up’, a spokesperson for the group told the Guardian back in January. ‘[…] We don’t have money to do a national advertising campaign. We have spare time, a ladder and maybe a little smidgen of wit.’ The group has since crowd-funded rather a lot of cash – with one massive billboard even greeting Theresa May as she arrived in Brussels last month.
Yet this is small fry compared to a pop-up exhibition, most recently staged in Austin, and created the The Daily Show and Comedy Central. The promisingly titled ‘The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library’ is a curatorial showcase for the 45th President’s social media presence, featuring exhibits including gold-framed tweets, a mock up of the Oval Office (incorporating a golden toilet) and a map of all the “s***hole” countries Trump has offended via the platform.
The ‘library’ bills it as an ‘interactive, hands-on experience for hands of all sizes’. As Trump himself might put it: yuge.
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