Although Brexit was THE word of 2018, its power and relevance has utterly diminished in our current circumstances, and Panchal's enigmatic painting now seems to belong to an entirely other lifetime. The two figures were conceived as his visual riposte to what he considered to be the absurdity and uncertainty of the Brexit scenario - a little Britain clutching at the back of a larger Europe, under the darkened glow of a setting sun. Yet, although this painting was born out of such a specific narrative, there are powerful resonances with our current COVID 19 situation, where we live with daily anxieties around borders and isolation - and where the simplest notion of human touch is denied to many.
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