Student’s lesbian artwork censored by school
January 14, 2018by Tim Gibson (mygwork)
A student at Laurence Jackson School in Guisborough has found her artwork glued over with ‘censored’ stickers. The secondary school student, Megan Angus, was told her artwork was too “sexually explicit” and needed to be shielded from the younger students. Angus says she was simply responding to the task, which required her to make a piece depicting outsiders. “I did same-sex relationships,” the 16-year-old said, “as they seem to be out of place in society. I wanted to get across that it shouldn’t be frowned upon and it shows girls can be together. It is something I feel passionate about.”
The painting depicts several lesbian couples in embrace and varying degrees of undress. They’re shown, collage-style, arranged around a huge rainbow flag. While in the original painting there appears to be nothing too explicit, the stickers cover up several gay kisses and clothed breasts. Angus labelled the censorship as nothing less than “homophobic”.
The school released a statement saying: “Due to the sexually explicit nature of some of the drawings in the student’s work, a censored strip of paper was Blu-tacked over these areas (not glued).” Though they later admitted they may have been a bit “overzealous” with some of the stickers. They added “sexually explicit images of any nature would have been censored if displayed.” They didn’t add if that was true for depictions of straight kisses.
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