Art has a way of revealing the truth. When art students responded to an invitation by the Guardian to design election posters, they did not so much produce great political art as give a voice to some of the young voters, potential voters and non-voters whose futures will be so influenced by the outcome of next Thursday’s General Election. What do these young artists feel about the choice on offer and how do they see the parties, or, for that matter, democracy itself?
The picture is splintered and confused, a landscape of distrust. “New from Labour: Tory Lite” is clearly not a poster for either Labour or the Conservatives. Perhaps it is a recommendation not to vote at all. Otherwise, if put on walls in Scotland, it would work pretty well for the SNP. For, to judge from these posters, nationalism in Scotland is the one choice that can really excite young people – the one vote that brings out the passion of youth. Thus, Nicola Sturgeon poses as Rosie the Riveter, the second-world-war icon of female workers, in a poster that identifies the SNP with feminism and socialism. A cinematic design putting her together with Natalie Bennett and Leanne Wood looks as if it was done in a drunken late-night art session after watching their TV debate group hug. “Dream Girls” would be absurdly funny, if it weren’t such a heartrending instance of young people actually getting worked up about politics.
In the “English” parties’ denunciations of the SNP and its potential influence south of Berwick in a hung parliament, there is pathetically little interest in the moving fact these posters reveal: that young people can be very excited by politics, if it speaks in a language that is not cynical.
The need for that engagement is terrifyingly clear in some of the other posters. Several of the artists are simply trying to persuade their friends, or themselves, that it is worth voting at all. “At least spoil your ballot”, urges one. It’s not exactly a wholehearted endorsement of parliamentary democracy. Another poster tries to make the election cool by promoting it as a gig or festival.
Most troubling of all is the one that has succesive governments of various colours giving the electorate the finger. This poster uses a clever visual device to express a simplistic misunderstanding of history. The 1945 Labour government did not give anyone the finger, as it is shown doing here – more like a leg up. While other artists promote the vote, perhaps this poster’s blast of negativity is depressingly expressive of what an alienated generation feels about all political parties, except the utopian alternative the SNP apparently now is. A scary image of a grey-suited puppeteer controlling the world is not a coherent call for action but a despairing image of a political system beyond control. A mockery of all politicians’ empty rhetoric – “A Hardworking Poster for Hardworking People” – is bang on, bleakly so.
In an election in which leaders ruthlessly limit their exposure to actual voters, these artworks are a raw revelation of what some of the younger ones actually think. It’s a dead-accurate view of this election and its probable outcome. What would the election result be if it were decided by these images? It would surely be a hung parliament, just as the polls predict in real life. So little impact have our party leaders made on the public imagination that most are too boring to depict on these arty posters. If Sturgeon gets their love, Nigel Farage has earned art students’ contempt. But the parody of the iconic Obama “Hope” poster that repudiates Farage reminds us, too, how little there is in this election of the charisma that wins majorities, let alone inspires great political art.
There’s no Milifandom in these posters, just a bleak call to erase the horror of Tory rule by voting Labour. I can’t see the Labour party buying this design for the final days of its campaign, as no argument is made. Enemies of the Greens may, however, want to use the incredibly smug portrait of a Green voter to put people off voting Green.
This is a revealing gallery of a generation’s lack of belief in conventional politics and its need to persuade itself or be persuaded even to vote at all. There is not much reassurance here for anyone hoping for a clear and decisive result next week. Which is a shame, for by far the best and most incisive of these posters makes a good point catchily: Tories only care if you’ve got grey hair.
