The political made visual in exhibition

Political satire in pictures gets remembered. Who can ever forget drawings of a scowling Richard Nixon, his five-o'clock shadow darkening half his face, growling, "I am not a crook." Or another former U.S. president, Lyndon Johnson, showing all the world the scar from his recent gall bladder surgery.

In that spirit, the British Council of Korea will open an exhibition tomorrow at its center in downtown Seoul. Titled "Up Front and Personal -- Three Decades of U.K. Political Graphics," the event will be held in collaboration with the Korea Institute of Design Promotion at the Korea Design Center in Bundang, Gyeonggi province.

More than 100 pieces by British graphic artists will be on display, including posters, badges, leaflets, and T-shirts, all of which satirize the past three decades of British politics and society. The works are categorized into six themes: campaign/politics, family/ society, war/ peace, the earth, sex, and the environment. Highlights range from spray-paint art and ephemera from alternative presses to 1980s nuclear disarmament campaign propaganda to graphics from the women's liberation movement.

The curator of the exhibition Liz McQuiston says that wit and humor are present throughout. "The works are of great subtlety and sensitivity," she says. "Difficult messages are communicated tactfully but memorably."

Ms. McQuiston will give a special seminar on Thursday and Friday in Bundang to explain the objective and message of the pieces and to give an overview of the British graphic design industry.

This event is being held to commemorate the First Korea International Poster Biennale.

The exhibition runs until Nov. 30. For more information, call (02) 3702-0625 or visit www.bckorea.or.kr.

by Choi Jie-ho