In The Dark Times

This document is a record of the exhibition by Martin Fowler and Billy McCall at the Vallum Gallery, University of Cumbria, Brampton Road, Carlisle, UK, which ran from 21 October to 1 November 2024. Drawing its title from Bertolt Brecht’s ‘War Primer’ (1937), the 'In The Dark Times' exhibition offers a critical counter to so-called liberal humanist society and the pernicious myth of progress. Referencing the oil industry, weapons manufacturers, the British Army and neoliberal ‘freeports’, this vivid, cartoony and often scabrous exhibition points to the legitimation crisis engulfing the governmental aristocracy and its potentially catastrophic impact on political and civil society. Taking inspiration from diverse sources such as Disney’s ‘Fantasia’, John Gray’s ‘Straw Dogs’, 1980’s amusement arcades and the poems of Tom Leonard, this ‘state of the nation’ report offers a critical and disturbing reappraisal of 21st century Britain and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.