Events

7 May: British Landscapes Virtual tour of Natural Encounters at Leeds Art Gallery 10:00–11:30, online.

Drawing from Leeds Art Gallery’s rich collection, Natural Encounters explores the many different strategies artists have used to approach, interpret or respond to nature. During this event, Dr Laura Claveria, co-curator of the exhibition will be live in the galleries and will lead a tour via Zoom. This will be followed by a discussion of themes raised by the exhibition and Q&A. The event will be quite informal and open to all and offers a much-missed opportunity to venture inside a physical exhibition.

Book via Eventbrite here

11 May: British South-Asian Visual Art Post Cool Britannia The Body, the Home of Unseen Landscapes George Chakravarthi, Jai Chuhan and Alia Syed 18:30–20:00, online.

This event looks at the placement of the diasporic body within the traditions of Western European art. Three artists share their depictions of the ‘other’ through painterly surfaces, deteriorated celluloid film and the photographic male nude. We enter pictorial spaces of displacement and ownership, offering alternate narratives through the gaze, mudras and fabric.

Book via Eventbrite here

27 May: Working Class British Art Network The City in British Art 14:00–16:00, online.

Online event exploring interpretations of The City in British Art. The Research Group will be circulating booking details for the event to its members shortly.

To enquire about joining the group, please contact WCBritArt@gmail.com

27 May: Race, Empire & the Pre-Raphaelites Artists in Dialogue: Contemporary responses to nineteenth-century art, design and Empire 10.30–12:00, via Zoom

How are contemporary artists of colour engaging with nineteenth-century art, design and Empire in their practice? What are the challenges, potential and limitations of displaying contemporary artists’ work to challenge racism and colonial violence in historic collections? This online event will feature presentations by artists Sunil Gupta, Belinda Kazeem-Kaminski, Farwa Moledina and Bharti Parmar, followed by structured discussion in breakout rooms.

The Research Group will be circulating booking details to its members shortly. To enquire about joining the group, please contact Race.Empire.PRB@gmail.com

Coming up in summer 2021…

Irish Modernism seminar series, led by CCA Derry~Londonderry

BAN supported seminars Dates tbc

Re-Imagining Colonial Narratives seminar series, led by University of Westminster

BAN supported seminars Dates tbc

BAN RESEARCH WORKING CLASS BRITISH ART

‘There is no such thing as a working-class curator,’ a gallery director said to me not long after starting in my role at the Arts Council Collection …

This isn’t true. There are a vast amount of talented and insightful workingclass curators all over the UK. Nevertheless, the fact that this opinion was held by a person in a position of power was telling. In that moment I didn’t have a response, I didn’t have the evidence to hand or the argument ready to reply.

Last year a key text was published that provided the statistical evidence behind what many in our sector have felt to be true. In Culture is Bad For You (Manchester University Press, 2020), Orian Brook, Dave O’Brien and Mark Taylor showed that our cultural industries are heavily skewed in favour of middle-class people. It also outlines how this is reflected in visitor demographics, showing that attending art galleries is very much a minority pursuit appealing primarily to those who are already advantaged. What I was looking for was about the visual art, and artists in particular. But with this book I felt I now had a solid foundation to show a gap in research which needed addressing.

When I saw the call-out for new Research Groups from the British Art Network, I posted on the Museum as Muck Facebook group asking, ‘does anyone agree this is needed?’ ‘shall I go for it?’ The response was overwhelmingly positive. Founded in 2018, Museum as Muck is an activist network supporting workingclass museum professionals and advocating for social change within the sector. As BAN asked for a partner organisation, they were the natural choice and I was delighted when their founder, Michelle McGrath, agreed to collaborate on the Group.

The decisions arts organisations make are powerful. They shape history and when looking at our public collections, we see society’s inequalities reflected. Who gets an exhibition, what works are purchased, and whose voices are validated dictates whose history is deemed worthy of historicising. If workingclass artists are under-represented, we only have a partial view of what life is like for so many and if this isn’t addressed then the gap between the art we care

for and the audiences we seek to engage widens, and the case for the arts in general becomes weaker. By building a picture of how our cultural institutions represent working-class identities we can ensure stories told through British arts organisations include the perspectives of working-class artists, adding to complex and contested notions of national identity.

From education to early career opportunities, gallery representation and ‘ways in’ to public ownership, artists from working class origins have less exposure to the social currency needed to advance their careers. Calling yourself an artist in the first place may be a challenge for those from working class backgrounds. We are often told that things are improving but progress is slow. But are things improving?

Neo-liberalism suggests that moving ‘up’ class strata is what we should aim to do. This research network starts with the premise that progression in the arts means a shift towards including more working-class perspectives to more closely reflect the demographic of the UK. There are two key aims to this research network:

1. To promote and lead research around work by artists from working class backgrounds

2. To support arts organisations to adequately care for and present work by artists from working class backgrounds

Overall, we want to see more paid opportunities for artists from working-class backgrounds come out of the work we do.

What I have found both daunting and encouraging in equal measure is the openness many have shown in sharing information about their backgrounds. In some of the conversations I have had, I have witnessed people reflect on their earlier lives and how it has shaped who and where they are today.

While I found the research around working-class British art fairly sparse, what I did find tended to be centred on white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied artists. This Research Group needed to be intersectional in its approach to ensure it was contributing to the wider movement to dismantle discriminatory power structures. In our first event artist Elsa James spoke directly to the insidiousness of classism intersecting with racism, and how for black people to approach something like a level playing field we are not just talking about working twice as hard but more like 14 or 15 times harder. Aidan Moesby, an artist, activist and curator, spoke in no uncertain terms on how our structures are not fit for the purpose of nurturing the talent of someone from a working-class background living with a disability, and that it was the duty of those with agency to make the changes. Many media outlets would have us believe that there is one working-