The art of protest

Issue 1734

The art of protest

Big Issue is celebrating 35 years of working to end poverty with a major new exhibition in partnership with Grow Up. Paste Present Future features artworks by 35 prominent contemporary artists postered around London, alongside a show at Laundry Studios. Inside this week’s Big Issue, we showcase every piece in the project and ask the artists about their own big ideas to change the world. Curator Blam, who is one half of Grow Up, explains that he wanted to take ideas about the power of protest beyond the traditional gallery setting to reach as wide an audience as possible. Limited-edition prints of all the artworks are on sale in the Big Issue Shop, with a portion of the proceeds going towards our mission.

Also inside

  • The harsh reality of life in NEET Britain, from young one person who has struggled to find work
  • Kelly Macdonald recalls the open-casting audition that catapulted her out of the shopping centre and into Trainspotting
  • Photographer Brock Elbank is renowned for his striking portraits, so when he found himself homeless and living in his car, he began to turn his focus onto an often-undocumented world
  • We hear from three prominent creatives in their Letters to the Future – part of a new show at the Southbank Centre
  • Sylvia Patterson is one of the UK’s top music journalists. Her new book lifts the lid on rock’s biggest misfits and mavericks
  • Andrew Scott is feeling the heat in new D-Day movie, Pressure
  • Kaya Scodelario, star of Netflix series The Gentlemen, says she’d much rather be a gangster than an aristocrat
  • After the sudden death of his daughter, Dave Healey found an unexpected way to process his grief via British Sign Language
  • And Pembrokeshire vendor Robin Price has just spent his holidays on a canal boat gazing at the night stars. He says it was magical

And much more



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