February 02, 2005

Dublin artist to document the general election trail
By Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent

A DUBLIN arts lecturer has been commissioned by MPs to be Britain’s official general election artist.

David Godbold, 44, who overlays discarded papers such as shopping-lists with delicate Old Masters-style drawings and caustic texts, was chosen yesterday by the all-party Advisory Committee on Works of Art to document the general election, expected in May.

Mr Godbold, who was born in Norwich but who now votes only in Ireland because he has lived in Dublin since 1990, told The Times that, because he now feels like a semi-outsider, he can take a more dispassionate view of the country’s social and political condition. “I am really proud to get this,” he said. “I’m very excited.”

Godbold is only the second official election artist. The first was Jonathan Yeo who, in covering the 1997 general election, painted portraits of Tony Blair, William Hague and Charles Kennedy, the leaders of the main parties, on canvases in direct proportion to the number of votes they won.

Godbold is being given more freedom. He will receive passes to travel on battle-buses and observe the leaders as closely as he needs, although he intends to bring out the concerns of the common man.

Godbold, whose work is inspired by Rowlandson, Gillray and Daumier, the 18th and 19th-century satirists, was chosen by nine MPs chaired by Tony Banks, the former Sports Minister. They considered an initial selection of 30 artists brought to their attention by Tara Howard, an independent art consultant.

The idea for an official election artist came from Mr Banks just before the last election. Such a momentous event in politics deserved the equivalent of a war artist, he said.

Godbold will join the campaign trail for 18 days before polling day, attending all the major events, gathering ephemera and drawing his distinctive images over their surfaces.

Mr Banks said: “It will be a day-by-day visual diary of what is going on. His work is classical as well as contemporary, an interesting mix of genre. You can see Gillray in his work, although he is not a cartoonist. He has a different way of looking at things.”

Godbold, whose work is in Trinity College, Dublin and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, studied at Goldsmiths College, and he is now a senior lecturer at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. He intends to reflect the public’s cynicism about politicians and negotiate “the choppy waters” of political correctness: “The impossibility of doing anything without offending somebody.”

The Commons committee’s annual £100,000 acquisition budget is larger than that of most museums. Godbold’s commission is believed to be worth about £15,000.