Art Party [12A]

Directed by Tim Newton, Bob Smith and Roberta Smith

3/5

AT THE Edinburgh Festival comic Kevin Day delivered a cracker. “I forgot my inflatable Michael Gove,” he confessed, “which is a shame ’cause half-way through he disappears up his own arsehole.”

Such digs and a national campaign of vilification finally forced Dave to give the Education Secretary the heave-ho after his pathetic impressions of a government glove puppet.

Apart from his advocating Gradgrind’s academic theory of drumming in facts, Gove considered art superfluous to the syllabus, categorising it as a mere pastime.

As a consequence, given the cultural contribution by the arts to the economy since Britain’s pre-eminence dating from the 1960s, he became a figure of fun.

But his attack on the arts alarmed academics, teaching unions and workers in the creative industries, among them Patrick Brill —  creatively aka Bob and Roberta Smith — who in 2011 produced an oversized painted-word response to the ex-education secretary’s proposed eradication of art from the British school syllabus.

It resulted in the Art Party Project in 2013, which aims  to make contemporary art more accessible and demonstrate its ability to influence meaningful conversation and political thought.

The film is thus  a mix of performance, interviews and scripted  scenes, as Brill and other particpants — among them Jeremy Deller, Cornelia Parker and Richard Wentworth — make their way to the Art Party conference last year.

In this mix of  documentary,  road movie and political fantasy there are many inventive sequences, including actor John Voce satirising a simulacrum Michael “Grove.”

Ironically, given its innovatory intent, the cinematography is more conventional with talking heads and a few musical interludes culminating in Gove experiencing an aesthetic blue revaluation and redemption.

Unlike our creative industries  — which turn over  some £71.4 billion annually— there’s unfortunately no danger yet of such idiots being in short supply.