England “Ghosts” British Art – a frieze

Britishness conveyed through visual art suggests both a spectrum of alliance and an assumption of complicity (with Britishness), which is increasingly untenable in the context of regional political devolution. Untenable because in the field of contemporary British culture means there is always a dominant regional inflection; regional and inter-regional identities often prevail over the national. For many the term Britishness increasingly means not Greatness but Englishness. This essay discusses this through a range of postwar and contemporary exhibitions, critical overviews, characterizations and related political discourse, and visual art practices that develop and contribute to the idea of an explicitly contemporary English Art.