OH, THE irony. An exhibition of paintings criticised 34 years ago in a newspaper editorial as “smut not art” is now on show in the very building where that editorial was written and printed.

What’s The Meaning of This?, John Yeadon's “selective retrospective” at the Coventry Evening Telegraph Building marks his reaching 70 and it also looks back at what may or may not have changed over the years. Is society more tolerant and open-minded, is Coventry more enlightened and less provincial? he asks.

The front page story of 1984 in which a Tory councillor raged against Dirty Tricks, an exhibition of Yeadon’s paintings, as “overtly pornographic” is on show alongside an editorial. It was at what Yeadon calls the high point of Aids paranoia and “gay blame” and he describes the works as allegorical grotesque realist paintings.