For most of us it is as close as we will get to the inner workings of Britain’s spy apparatus. The lid has been lifted on GCHQ’s art collection, and it shows that spooks favour the work of Sir Michael Craig-Martin, one of the country’s leading conceptual artists.
Of 28 works requested from the Government Art Collection by spies at the eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham, 12 were by the 76-year-old artist, renowned for inspiring the Young British Artists movement. Several of the prints include incongruous pairings of items, such as a mobile phone and trombone, as well as the trivia of office life, such as a swivel chair and dividers. There are also a couple of pieces by the American “abstract encaustic” artist Mary Farmer and a sprinkling of Michael McKinnon’s spiral paintings inspired by the medieval Italian mathematician Fibonacci.
The emergence of details about the art the spies love owes much to the Art Newspaper which stumbled upon the details of MI6’s collection. Further searching revealed the art on the walls of GCHQ. Its correspondent Martin Bailey said his “eyes lit up” when he discovered by accident the collection of the Secret Intelligence Service. “Hopefully seeing colourful and stimulating art provides brief moments of contemplative pleasure in the midst of fighting international terrorism,” he said.