Estate

Description

Estate is a visual and textual exploration of working class culture and landscapes seen through the lens of working class writers. Over the last five decades, working-class communities have been the inspiration to explore social and political issues in some of the most powerful examples of our national culture.

The project is a collaboration between visual artist Patrick Murphy and academic David Forrest. It uses the Universities Special Collections and Archives as a catalyst for a new body of work: Estate. The collections house the archives of writers such as Barry Hines (Kes, Threads), Jack Rosenthal (Coronation Street, Spend, Spend, Spend) and academic Richard Hoggart (The Uses of Literacy). The imagery and text speaks to the examinations of working-class life that are found within these writers’ works, and many more such as Andrea Dunbar, Shelagh Delaney, and David Storey, and filmmakers like Shane Meadows and Clio Barnard. Estate also draws on Patrick’s and David’s personal experiences of growing up on council estates.

In examining and reinterpreting historical representations of working-class life, Estate seeks to encourage reflection on what constitutes working-class culture in the present moment, and invites considerations of how the creative industries might better enable working-class stories to be told.