Liars of Earth, Chad McCail’s monumental 100ft long monochrome drawing, is to go on show for the first time in the UK at the National Glass Centre in Sunderland

Across a vast landscape that encompasses all of the institutions that shape us, McCail explores how we can combine forces to work together, and defeat those who would rule over us.

His epic work asks how we might live together in the twenty-first century to share our resources more equally, and to create a new way of life.

Liars of Earth is an allegory of the way we live now: and of things to come. On the one side of a great divide are masked, robotic figures which have been commanding the landscape, exploiting its produce, and manipulating our labour, for their own gain. On the other side are massive mythical characters including a minotaur, a snake, and a “man of men”, a giant figure built of hundreds or thousands of individuals, all working together to defeat the robots and propose a new order.

The story resembles an updated, modern version of the print accompanying Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, in which during a crisis the entirety of the ‘body politic’ has to act as one. Only by working together can we build a world in which we can act towards a common good, and shape a world in which freedoms are secure. McCail’s work asks us to imagine other possible worlds in which we might unite to overcome the forces that remain aligned against us.

  • Chad McCail' Liars of Earth, Long Gallery, National Glass Centre, Sunderland. Saturday, June 24 to Sunday, October 8.10am-5pm daily. Free admission/free visitor parking. www.ngca.co.uk or 0191 515 5555