Art gallery under attack due to "insulting" artwork

A gallery showing inflammatory images of veiled Muslims, including a bare-breasted woman partially clad in a burqa, is under police surveillance after being attacked earlier this week.

Windows and doors at the SaLon Gallery in west London were smashed after a series of abusive, anonymous phone calls and angry protests about the images from Muslims. The gallery has complained to police.

The solo exhibition of paintings by Sarah Maple includes a veiled woman holding a pig, which is interpreted as a flagrant disregard of the Islamic ban on eating pork. The show – entitled "This Artist Blows" – also includes two self-portraits: one of Maple wearing a headscarf has an image of Kate Moss's naked breast attached to it; another shows Maple in a T-shirt bearing the slogan "I love jihad". In another, a veiled Muslim woman wears a badge that says "I love orgasms".

Maple, a 23-year-old of Kenyan and British parentage, defended her work, saying she had not meant to cause offence but to explore her Britishness and her Muslim faith. She voiced concern about her safety and said she hoped the exhibition of 39 pictures, which opened this month, would not be taken down before its official closing date of 23 November.
"I do think some people have just reacted to my work without thinking about the concepts behind it," she said. "I'm a practising Muslim and initially, when I started making the work, it was really personal, about my background with my father being British and my mother who is a Muslim and how I felt growing up. I was exploring the question of fusing those two together and whether it could be done.

Maple, from Sussex, has upset the Islamic world before. An exhibition by her earlier this year showed Muslim women in provocative poses, including one suggestively sucking on a banana. She won the Saatchi Prize last year for her self-portraits, some of which showed her in a headscarf smoking a cigarette. "People interpreted it as being related to sex, and that it was a post-sex light up," she said.

A spokeswoman for SaLon said the gallery in Bayswater, a part of London with a large Muslim population, was receiving about 12 abusive phone calls a day and emails condemning the show. Staff had to call police last week after an angry woman came in to complain. "She was in a full burqa and was irate and upset. Her behaviour was quite threatening," added the spokeswoman.

update of this story

Muslim artist gets death threats

A Muslim artist exhibiting her work at a west London gallery, has received death threats via email.

Staff at SaLon gallery in Notting Hill said they had received violent emails about Sarah Maple, 23, and her family.
The glass front of the gallery has also been smashed with staff receiving abusive phone calls since the start of her exhibition on 16 October.
Some sections of the Muslim community have criticised her in the past for her portrayal of her religion.
One work showed a woman in a headscarf holding a pig.
Gallery director Samir Ceric said he was "sad, upset and disappointed" at the way art was being treated and called the violent reaction to her work an "attack on freedom of expression".
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said officers were investigating the damage to the gallery's window but could not comment on the threatening email.
Some of her photographic self-portraits feature her in a headscarf in provocative and suggestive poses and one painting shows the artist in a headscarf with a bare breast.
But Mr Ceric said her work was being misrepresented and dealt with religion but also politics, celebrity culture "and so many other subjects".

"We expected people to ask questions but we didn't expect anything like this," he added.
The gallery intends to continue exhibiting the artworks by Ms Maple, who was born in Sussex, until its scheduled end on 16 November.