Hay Gallery exhibit not a protest

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00:00This gallery, The Chair, is an artist-led gallery where I select and curate artists

00:11coming in. These two young girls turned up, sisters, on Monday the 22nd of September from

00:16London and unpacked their work. And I was here for an hour or so helping them, which

00:21I generally am, and we were looking at the window pictures and I said, well we'll put

00:26a low picture in the window so people can look over. I said to Poppy Bainham, I said,

00:31is this picture a long skinny picture but a shallow one, not terribly high? She said

00:36that's good. Now all her paintings are of the female form naked, or semi-naked. And

00:41I get a phone call while I'm there saying, Val, Val, a woman's just come into the shop

00:45and told us we've got to take the picture out the window because it's pornographic and

00:49you know, what do we do? I said, well just leave it in the window and if anybody else

00:53makes a comment, just tell them to speak to me. And within five minutes I had a text

00:57from a local tradesman, who I know, and he'd obviously gone in and said something similar.

01:04I didn't want to remove the picture because this is a girl who's travelled all this way,

01:09all her paintings have got the semi-naked female form and I thought, you know, why should

01:14I? And then the police got involved because what happened was on Monday, two, I don't

01:19know who they were, two people complained to Powys Police. So he said, under the Public

01:24Order Act 1986, Section 5, you are causing alarm, harm or distress. We have been asked

01:30to remove. I said, okay, what happens if I don't remove? Well we go back to the complainants,

01:35we see if we can mediate, if they want to, they wish to, the complainants, and if the

01:41police think they have a case, they'll take you to court. I said to them, I won't be removing

01:45the painting because I'm compromising the integrity of my artist and that's my business.

01:50So the Telegraph got in touch with me first, last week, last Friday, a week ago today,

01:55and he asked me if it was a protest and I said no. So no, it's an homage, much more

01:59an homage. People can think it could be a protest, no, never, that's not who I am.