The Box: Remember, Respond, Resist

 This exhibition closed on the 11th January 2026

This exhibition looks at how artists explore conflict and activism.  We first have to remember what has previously happened, because this is important to understand what is happening now.  We then form a response to what is happening and then we resist.  This exhibition looks at these themes across several spaces.  The exhibitions feature works from the British Council Collection and the the exhibition was part of the UK / Poland Season 2025.

The first gallery we entered was the one above the 100 Journeys gallery.  This large gallery featured artworks from a number of different artists and included many different medias including sculpture.  The works looked at war and resistance from a number of different artists.  From depictions of people sleeping in the underground stations during WW2 by Henry Moore to a large tapestry by Goshka Macuga 'Make Tofu Not War' that looks at the climate war.  This tapestry was quite surprising in that it used 3D effect and could be viewed with 3D glasses.  I didn't even realise it was a tapestry to begin with.

As expected, I loved some of the art in this room more than others, but it was all thought provoking and eye opening and very diverse.  I appreciated the captions by each work.  They gave enough information that you understood the context and aim of the piece.  Some museums just give the name of the piece and the artist and this just isn't enough for me to get in to many pieces.

This was particularly apparent in the next room where the pieces explored art in Poland and it's role in activism and the response to it.  I found this interesting but it was more difficult to relate.  The information given was enough for me to understand the pieces in a superficial sense and the context of their production.  The collages featured many pieces from magazines and newspapers in Polish.  Other pieces were reactions to the attacks made on various artworks in Poland, the original artwork would be referenced, but blacked out.  I think it would have been nice to have had reproductions of the original images, maybe it just was not possible to do this.  I found myself wishing I was there with one of my Polish friends, to see their reactions and hear their interpretations.  My favourite piece was a Family Module Macquette but my reaction to it was rather different than that the artist was aiming for, because my cultural background is different, the issues are different to the ones faced here.

We then moved in to the Media Lab where the film being shown was Honorata Martin's "About Going Out into Poland".  Honorata travelled the length of Poland, with just a change of clothing, a sleeping bag and her dog and the film documents her experiences and reflections on this journey.  She travelled from Gdansk to the far south in the Silesia region covering around 30km each day.  Although the film was in Polish, there were subtitles.  I was not able to watch the whole film, but I would liked to have done.

There as another small room above one of the entrances to the building that is no longer in use, opposite a set of stars.  This a smaller room that featured a number of photographic images with a few items and a film.  The contents of this room explore Plymouth's Polish connections.  I had known that Polish pilots had moved to the UK and fought in the war but I had not realised, or remembered, that Polish ships had also come here with their crews.  These ships were based at Plymouth and following the war, the crews were unable to return and were naturalised.  In recognition of this connection, Plymouth later became twinned with Gdansk.  The footage showed an interview of a Polish man talking about remaining here and the connections with Poland that remained alive.  I appreciated learning about this new to me history.

The final room was taken over by Grayson Perry's series of six tapestries, The Vanity of Small Differences.  These works were originally produced as sketches on Adobe Photoshop before being created using a computer controlled loom.  There was also a video presentation in the room which I really appreciated.  I would not have fully understand the story of the tapestries by myself and would have missed many details.  I also do not have the art history understanding to have realised the references that were being made to other famous works.  Reproductions of these works were shown under each tapestry.

Each tapestry was large in scale and I appreciated them.  I liked many of the details and the way they were portrayed, such as colours and sweep of the skies.  I found some details amusing, such as depiction of Jamie Oliver as the god of the socially upward mobile.  I can relate to some of the details and some of the aspects of the story are familiar, as it was designed to be.  It's clear Grayson wanted us to laugh but was also laughing at us as a society.  I wonder how these depictions will age over time, how our relationship with them will change.  They are stunning and thought provoking, but it is also clear to me that Grayson thinks very differently to me and I cannot completely relate, I am a little too literal and this is a beautiful flight of fantasy.

Overall I really enjoyed this exhibition, however, I am not entirely sure if all of the spaces were meant to interconnect and if so, how.  It was almost like a series of smaller interconnected exhibitions loosely connected under the theme and the relationship with Poland.  

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Following the closure of the main exhibition of Remember, Respond, Resist, I as able to go back to the Box and found that the film  "About Going Out into Poland" by Honorata Martin was still showing and watched it in full.  I have made a separate post on this film.