‘Platformed communities and acts of service’
MANY HANDS a Collaboration with The Working-Class Creatives Database at Sunny Bank Mills
by George Storm Fletcher.
Many Hands is an exhibition about community and identity. By focusing on the role of industry, space for a nuanced discussion of class is created, without feeling reductive or ‘difficult’. It is a beautifully edited and stylish show, with green accents leading us through a clear narrative, from photographic pieces to archival research and local histories. Many Hands does not provide answers about class, but rather poses a series of questions: What does ‘Working-Class’ in Britain ‘look like’? How can artists unravel stories without falling into overplayed tropes or stereotypes? And how can ‘cohesive communities exist, thrive and evolve without industry as a tool to unite them?’ In this exhibition, it is occupation and location that provides the lens; clothworkers, steelworks, miners, Windrush immigrants and pubgoers being some shown examples.
We are met by a Billy Elliot-esque boy leaping across a garage forecourt. Ian Beesley’s large-scale photograph encapsulates many of the show’s themes; how communities are thrust forward through time, but that these periods of flux are often set within a strong, fixed geographical location. There is a smaller child, crouching below the boy’s legs, he stares as us, somewhat like the past, appearing solid in contrast to the hazy movement of the flying boy. Photographic images can present the past as something solid and confirmed; but this exhibition does not herald the past as better than the present. Rather, it platforms communities, people and place, whilst providing the context for how these vignettes into the past came to be.
Victor Wedderburn Jr, a migrant from Jamaica who joined his parents in Bradford in 1977, used a redundancy payment to purchase a camera. He then used this to take images of his community in Manningham. None of the artists in this show occupy a voyeuristic approach, some are a homegrown part of the communities that they portray, others are living within precarious economics whilst making their work. It would be easy to fall into the trap of romanticising the images in Many Hands – perhaps because they could fall into a trope of describing ‘what working class looks like’. But the composition and display of the images is sensitive to the people shown – beautifully framed and shot both in the moment, and with respect to how the moment may age.
Janine Wiedel exhibits this care through an active intersectionality, showing steel workers from the West Midlands in her exhibited series ‘Vulcan’s Forge.’ The miners, showcasing the full extent of PPE in the 1970s, smile in their hardhats for the camera. Wiedel lived and worked in this area for two years, an investment of time that cannot be faked, or purchased. Now that information is expected to be available instantly, this act of service to the people she is photographing is a powerful antithesis.
Similarly in Amber Brown’s landscape photogravure pieces, the process of polishing plates and turning the presses to produce her prints, replicates the actions of industry in a way that is not performative, but is intrinsic to the image. The gestures used to create the work therefore pay respect to the history and heritage of the place that is her subject matter. Moreover, there is a satisfying material logic running through Brown’s work as the bright rust colours that are a part of the artists pallet, are the same metals and by-products created by the industry in the areas depicted. Brown’s work lets them shine once more, emblematic of location, geography and process.
Industry, from this point could be more easily understood as production of goods to sell, but as the UK navigates de-industrialisation and tertiary industries take hold, industry could now mean working in areas like care or hospitality. This is tangible within Many Hands, the artists evidently hold and look after the people and spaces that they are portraying.
A full-scale Grouse Butt houses a film by Joanne Coates. These wooden architectures are erected in remote landscapes to provide people shooting game birds a base from which to kill. Self-Identification, perhaps as ‘Working-Class,’ can be something that provides shelter from exposure. It could feel more comfortable, or safer, to be boxed in with others. This Butt is one that we can walk into, or out of, but the consequences of doing so may disturb the Grouse, leaving one visible and vulnerable. Does scaring the Grouse away symbolise freedom from a possibly restrictive marker, or is this turn towards individualism simply loss of community? I am not going to concretely define the Grouse here – whether shooting the bird symbolises a rejection of identity labels, or that we are stronger, and less susceptible to violence together. What is indisputable is the act of harm, the murder of the bird, and the constriction to a confined space that the work of Coates has created.
Left of the Grouse Butt is Sean O’Connell’s black and white photographs. The lower corner features an image of a girl with gappy teeth, smiling with an older man – perhaps her grandfather, who is also missing some incisors. In an episode of The Simpsons, Ralph lies to his dentist, saying he brushes saying ‘three times a day.’ The dentist, knowing that this is a falsehood, shows Ralph a book called ‘The Big Book of British Smiles’, a series of caricatures of Brits with horrible teeth.1 Upon seeing an image of King Charles, Ralph cries and says, ‘that’s enough!’ (I know how he feels.) Just six years after the NHS was founded by Nye Bevan in 1948, Dentistry was privatised. 2 The causes for the grandfather to have lost his teeth are suggested, paraphernalia relating to smoking is abundant in this exhibition – but a further option is provided, as hung directly next to grinning pair is a photograph of a boxer. He poses in stark high contrast, with his gloves raised into a fighting stance, the glow of the flash bulb illuminating his unblemished face. There is a practice in contact sports called ‘conditioning’, where fighters are repeatedly hit, often in the stomach or the legs. When their bodies heal, they are more able to withstand abuses. Communities find causes for celebration, despite being beaten and bruised – the boxer’s victory, or an intergenerational shared moment, like the young girls smile mirroring her grandfathers. But what has been reduced to a widespread joke about the British, or an emulated aesthetic, is resilience despite continued suffering. The visible effects of violence, like losing one’s teeth, are evidence of the actualised harm of shooting grouse.
As a pronounced hater of ‘Turkey teeth’, and the plastic reality that veneers offer, I feel that the turn towards the ‘perfect white smile’, symbolises more than just a self-conscious act of ‘choice’ in late-stage capitalism. In 2014, Matthew Bellamy, the lead singer of Muse, personally disappointed me by straightening his famously wonky pegs – assimilating into celebrityhood with a set of uniform, pearly whites. Healthy teeth do not all look the same, but poor dental health is proven to seriously reduce life expectancy. 3 The hidden truths of actualised harm lace many of the images in Many Hands. Poisoning from toxic heavy metals, the long-term effects of smoking and drinking, harsh noise levels in factory settings that caused my own Dad to go deaf. The shared intergenerational moment of having a ‘gappy smile’ is bittersweet. The girl will grow adult teeth, and some will say it’s up to her to keep them – but it is the state, in providing the possibility for dentistry, or not, that determines her long-term health outcomes. Whether she will remain healthy is predominantly a consequence of her birth. The aesthetics that we can understand, monetise or ridicule as being ‘working-class’ are often reclamations of state violence, underfunding and constriction. O’Connell’s photography montage beautifully instigates discussion, without making his subjects case studies.
The appeal of these fraught aesthetics is tantamount to Kelly O’Briens pub like installation ‘Magic’ Memories. Enlarged technicolour envelopes advertising Gevacolor film, or ‘Your photograph here‘ draw us in. A grinning bartender stands behind recognisable pump labels, but O’Brien reminds us that ‘bright smiles and hidden exhaustion’, enact ‘performing contentment.’ These joyful scenes are created by individual labour. For example, to receive a glossy printed photograph: a negative must be developed, the film cut and organised, the shots printed. Nowadays our friends at Take it Easy (a local film lab favoured by many artists, myself included) also scan and colour correct each frame – yet more labour. What appears as a packaged, ready-made object, is created by workers. This work, that was perhaps more understood during the era that O’Brien speaks to, has been rendered invisible by the move towards digital. The SD card that stores the image, is created by overseas exploitation. The deindustrialisation that Britain is said to have ‘gone through’ continues abroad.
My friends and I recently discussed how the English fail to enjoy anything ‘properly,’ how moves to make us ‘safer’ like removing all branding from cigarettes doesn’t make the consequences of our choices more obvious, it just makes them uglier. British tobacco packets are now the most unappealing shade of grey, often matching the tone of the skies above us. Yorkshire favourite David Hockney spoke back to Sunak’s attempts to ban smoking, saying ‘Smoking Kills: but guess what, we all die anyway!’ 4 This exhibition is full of familiar imagery and satisfying proportions that we long for. Without reducing the serious topics of life expectancy and state health here to a discussion about fashion or aesthetics, what is punished or criminalised is always political. Just like the cool, clean icons of the Camel logo, or the reduction of Malboro Gold to Malboro Grey, perhaps this loss of colour is also a loss of understanding about what it is that we are consuming, and who is at work.
Ian Beesley features again later in the exhibition – his series of black and white film photographs showing the decline of The Moulders Arms, on Sticker Lane in Bradford. The epicentre for local groups; the football team, darts team and allotment society amongst others, was demolished in 1983. The beneficiary, an electronics factory, was meat to bring jobs to the area – but closed just one year later. We witness the buildings last delivery, and Sunday lunch, with the pub barely visible in the final image behind demolition hoardings. This third space, and the local history of this area were lost for no reason.
Leeds City Council recently asked for ‘feedback’ on their plan to build houses on the Headingley Allotment site. 5 The score index for the ‘impact’ of this scheme weighted transport links as +3, and proximity to central road networks as another +3. The loss of ‘local character’ only scoring -3. The scheme is largely judged on one’s ability to efficiently leave the area, and not on preserving nature, sharing or community. I wonder how the Local Council would rate the demolition of the Moulder’s Arms now? Perhaps: +3 Central location, +3 Vital homes built, +2 removal of anti-social behaviour, -1 loss of employment for landlady, -1 loss of collective joy. Perhaps an extra £10,000 of funding for loneliness amongst the aged will counteract the scheme? Beesley is documenting to the converted with me; my parents met in our local pub, the West End House in Ely, and both my brother and I worked there at the weekends, receiving a brown envelope on Friday nights. We formed our own independent friendships, perhaps introduced off the back of being ‘Fletch’s children’, but eventually finding our own identities amongst the regulars – shared interests, similar tastes in beer, mutual enjoyment at a good argument, usually about the dreaded ‘politics.’ Without local pubs people drink alone at home, and old-fashioned concepts purporting to the handling of one’s drink, are lost. A social culture entirely revolving around drinking is not wholly good, but making friends becomes harder without these spaces. As the world changes and we lose the older ways people defined themselves, for example, by their profession, a local pub can provide refuge and opportunity. I have worked as a wedding photographer for people I have met in my local, and the pub hosted a wake for my Dad when he died. Someone, who knows someone else, might know an electrician who isn’t too bad; someone else, might know a friend of a friend who has a decent car for sale. Meat raffles and ‘bonus ball’ traditions that provide structure to the working week become myths. Beesley’s work is both quietly reminiscent, Personal and Political, it radicalises me all over again.
A curated library of zines and photobooks valuably extends Many Hands. I am excited to find The Sausage Atlas by Andrew Towse and Anne Marie-Atkinson. Towse visits Greasy Spoons in his local area and rates the sausage sandwiches on abundance of sausages, decor, and the friendliness of staff. The glorious thing about Towse’s work however, is that he only ever finds sarnies that are ‘nice’, and the familiarity of the cafe is valued most of all. I first encountered Towse’s work at Archive on Kirkstall Road, when I was installing my own show, coincidentally named WORK. In the sausagey hyperreality that Towse offers, the changing Britain that this exhibition is formed by doesn’t feel quite so bleak after all.
Many Hands raises even more questions than those provided at the start, but spending time with this work reminds me how the best stories are not defined by their titles or even their images, but by how they are disseminated amongst the people.
- The Simpsons, Last Exit To Springfield, Season 4 Episode 17. Matt Groening 1993.
- The Founding of the NHS: 75 years on, Gov.UK
https://history.blog.gov.uk/2023/07/13/the-founding-of-the-nhs-75-years-on/
- Tooth loss as a predictor of shortened longevity, Friedman and Lamster, 2016.
- ‘David Hockney – Sunak Says Smoking Kills, but We’ll all Die Anyway!’ The Times, 7th of October 2023. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/david-hockney-uk-smoking-ban-right-0c9dqrjm8
- Charles Gray ‘Leeds Residents rally to sign petition to city council to protect ‘vital’ site from development’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 29t July 2025.
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General Arts & Culture