Leslie Felperin 

Art Party review – well-meaning but naive agitprop

Footage of a 2013 art gathering held to protest against then-education secretary Gove now looks a bit mean-spirited, writes Leslie Felperin
  
  

Art Party film still
Badly drawn boy … Art Party. Photograph: pr

A well-meaning but raggedy mishmash of agitprop, documentary and fantasy, this daft cinematic whatsit offers footage of speakers, performers and general happenings at the Art Party that took place in Scarborough in 2013, a multimedia event organised by the artist Bob and Roberta Smith (AKA Patrick Brill), the film's co-director. Various interested parties gather to perform, create and generally express their contempt for the policies of national curriculum-reformer/destroyer (depending on your politics) Michael Gove. Meanwhile, actor John Voce moves among them, impersonating Gove himself, with Julia Rayner in tow as his long-suffering assistant, producing a lame strain of satire that gets progressively more irksome and jejune. It's a shame this wasn't rushed out sooner after the last cabinet reshuffle, when Gove got shunted out of education. Arriving over a month later makes it feel both dated and strangely mean-spirited, almost enough to make one feel sorry for Gove, who in Voce's hands comes off as weirdly sympathetic figure, which surely wasn't the intention.

 

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