Artist Ai Weiwei has hit out at a UK gallery that rejected his work, claiming it was "too afraid to embrace my ideas".
Ai's work, 'Postcards for Political Prisoners', was not accepted by Firstsite, which faced "time constraints" in approving the exhibition.
Firstsite has also said the art work did not fit with exhibition's concept - to encourage people to make and display art in their windows.
Ai believes the work was rejected because it has an image of a treadmill given to him by Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange:
"I think the reason is related to Assange who has been incarcerated in HM Prison Belmarsh in London since his arrest on April 11, 2019, and that they don’t want to touch on a topic like Assange. Everyone is avoiding it -not just in the mainstream media, but in the circles of art and culture in general," he wrote for artnet.
There was a delay to the project as Ai confirmed a list of political prisoners who would be happy to receive postcards from the public; however, he says he was given no deadline.