A twice-attacked artwork goes back on display

Protests, egg-throwing and huge controversy mark its history

---

Content warning: this feature deals with subject matter including murder and violence towards children.

---

Step inside Newport Street Gallery, near Vauxhall, and you’ll find an artwork that prompted huge controversy the last time it was on display in London.

The artwork’s Myra by Marcus Harvey: a portrait of infamous Moors murderer¹ Myra Hindley based on her arrest mugshot. It was recreated at large scale using a cast of a child’s handprint - referencing Ian Brady and Myra Hindley’s conviction for murdering at least three children in the 1960s.

Marcus Harvey’s Myra. Photo: Tabish Khan

When it was first displayed at the Royal Academy of Art (RA) in 1997, four Royal Academicians (artist members of the RA) resigned in protest. Police investigated but ultimately found no legal basis for it being removed from display. The mother of one of the murdered children asked for the painting to be excluded from the show.

Once it was put on display the controversy continued, with windows of the RA being smashed and two artists vandalising it - first with paint and then with eggs. Once it had been restored it was put back on display behind Perspex, with security guards either side.

It’s understandable why it was viewed as controversial, and the ethics of keeping it on display, murky. At the same time it could claim to be an important piece of art history, as part of a pivotal moment in British art.

In the feature below the paywall I take a look at the context for the artwork’s original display: the birth of the Young British Artists (YBAs) as a movement, some of the key figures in British art at the time and the shift they represented from the post-war art movements in the UK - and the background to the artwork being displayed again now.

But first: I’m curious to know how people feel about it now, nearly 3 decades later. Do you think the artwork remains controversial today?

The birth of the YBAs

In the late 1980s contemporary art in Britain was deemed by many to be rather stale - one art critic said to me that the annual RA Summer Exhibition used to be a lot of green and brown, i.e. plenty of landscape painting and not the vibrant mix of genres that it has been in recent years.