British Museum to hold UK's first major exhibition of 'overlooked' postcard art, with Andy Warhol to Guerrilla Girls

The British Museum will hold the UK's first ever major exhibition of postcard artworks, featuring Andy Warhol, Jeremy Deller, Gilbert & George and Yoko Ono,

More than 300 postcards, many of which will be on show for the first time, will be part of a new exhibition dedicated to this lesser known aspect of contemporary art.

The World Exists to Be Put On A Postcard: Artists’ Postcards from 1960 to Now has been put together following a donation of 1,000 postcards from writer and curator Jeremy Cooper. Cooper had spent six years amassing this collection.

Highlights of the exhibition will include Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s War is Over! postcard, a collaboration between painter Richard Hamilton and Dieter Roth, and an invitation to Andy Warhol’s 1966 show Holy Cow! Silver Clouds!! Holy Cow! More artists to be featured include Tacita Dean, Rachel Whitehead, Guerrilla Girls and Bruce Nauman.

Postcard art became popular due to it being a cheap and fast way of getting the work widely seen. By producing in large numbers and disseminating via post, politically subversive messages could be quickly spread, long before digital communication came along.

The World Exists to Be Put On A Postcard runs February 7-August 4 at the British Museum, britishmuseum.org