James Martelli | Parliament, 2020

Screenprint

114 x 84 cm

Edition of 60

The ruined Palace of Westminster depicted in this work is intended as a metaphor for the moral collapse in recent government. After a huge amount of research into the structure and proportions of the buildings the image was drawn in felt tip, and this screenprint was made from that drawing. Because of the political nature of the subject matter a vernacular graphic language was used to make the image as accessible as possible. This graphic language owes a debt to some of the artists who worked on the cult British science fiction comic 2000AD. The screenprint was later scanned, adapted and sent to industrial printers used by advertisers. Several bilboard sized versions of the image were printed, at three metres high and six metres wide, and these were pasted up by the artist on bilboards in South London.