The Wintle Blog

This astonishing poster is called: “In Following the Revolutionary Road, Strive for an Even Greater Victory.” Can you call it beautiful? There’s the enigma. As a visual statement it’s electric and mesmerising. As visual documentary – a frame excerpted from history – it is... what? The talisman of a terror, totalitarian and mendacious? We know nothing about the mind behind the brush beyond a date, 1970, and a workshop: Shanghai Revolutionary Publishing Group. Was she or he idealist or cynic? volunteer or conscript? Committed, socialist genius? artist with nowhere to go but “revolutionary” art? and what did the original audiences think? and if we could possibly answer any of those questions, would it (should it?) affect our perceptions? The poster is part of a superb Chinese archive held by the University of Westminster. An exhibition, Poster Power: Images from Mao’s China, Then and Now , has just opened at the University’s buildings in Regent Street, London W1B 2UW , and runs until J...

[Archaeology: Westward/TSW complex, Derry’s Cross, Plymouth, 2011. Rubble covers the old studio and transmission areas; I used to work in an office by the four windows at the back; the canteen and bar ended where two vehicles are parked; new executives arrived triumphant and departed bruised just beyond the upturned tray, old drink can and squashed plastic bottle] It annoys me that I never met Peter Cadbury. I arrived at Westward TV shortly after his final defenestration, which was rather like going on an exchange to a foreign family who’d just concluded a vicious divorce. On one side were the remaining and new management: the parent left in possession of the home. On the other, the staff: his orphaned children. Enmities. Flashes of inexplicable anger. Sarcasm. False smiles and denial. I’d never before experienced anything like this (nor have I since). What was it about? “There is, I suppose,” I’d said to Ronnie Perry, the MD, at my interview, “no chance that you’re going to lose this ...