Immersed in the turbulent era that followed the Roman occupation of Britain. Once known as the 'dark' ages, in reality it's a time of glittering art and extraordinary cultural fusions.
An alternative history of the Black Death of the Middle Ages and its bitter - but profoundly creative - aftermath. Contemporary artists and performers, alongside historians and curators, reveal how a century of creative renewal emerged from the chaos of plague as survivors found their voice, questioning authority and challenging status and class.
In the 16th century, the British Isles experienced a religious revolution, as the kingdoms of England and then Scotland turned Protestant. Artists and experts today reveal how, during the reign of Elizabeth I, Protestants and Catholics used art, language and new technology to wage a battle for power in the Isles, creating surprising and often radical works.
Architect Amanda Levete climbs the Tulip Stairs in the Queen's House, Greenwich, and reassesses Inigo Jones' elegant and innovative design, while portrait artist Tai Shan Schierenberg encounters Van Dyck's monumental portrait of the Earl of Pembroke's family and finds signs of the dysfunction and tensions which point to the civil war to come.
Tracing the story of Britain during the 18th century, a period that saw an explosion of creativity and a country with enough money, from trade and conquest, to pay for it. But the money had a dark side: The slave trade. But the age of exploitation was stirring up a growing social conscience.
With the industrial revolution transforming the British Isles, a divide opened up between the urban and the rural, forcing artists to respond to the upheaval to lives and the landscape.
Art goes to war during the first half of the 20th century: war with the old imperial order, war with convention and war with the very idea of what it means to be human. This is a story of artists grappling with the destruction, fighting back and transforming the culture of the Isles.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the generation of artists who recorded the shocks of global war gave way to an explosion of new voices from across the British Isles, reinventing the arts and creating a richer, more diverse culture. Young artists rebelled against the old establishment, kicking against the confines of class, sex, nation and race.
