The snaking line of art-worlders waiting in the rain to be cleared by House of Commons security to view Artangel’s latest commission—The Ethics of Dust by Jorge Otero-Pailos in Westminster Hall—were treated to a more direct engagement with contemporary history as several thousand London Remain marchers poured past from what was supposed to be a cancelled rally in Trafalgar Square. The stream of protestors, who included a posse of Royal College of Art students distinguished by their rather well-executed banners, received an enthusiastic response to their anti-Brexit chanting from the trapped queue. Among these were the artists Richard Wentworth and Simon Patterson, the Tate Modern director Frances Morris and Jenni Lomax, the director of Camden Arts Centre.
Once inside the venerable space of Westminster Hall and bathed in the honey glow of Otero-Pailos’s suspended back-lit latex cast—which contains the grime of several centuries—many felt a stronger desire to be outside with the animated, youthful throng contemplating the tumultuous events of the here and now, rather than the dust of ages. But all agreed that it was also apposite that we were gathered together in the most ancient part of our parliament’s buildings, which itself had been built under the reign of a European, William Rufus the son of William the Conqueror, in 1097. For, as the protesters were chanting outside, “we are European family”.
