Exhibitions

Tim Brennan – English Anxieties

Mar 14 - Apr 26 2009

Following a commission by Ffotogallery and Photoworks, in association with the Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex and the European Centre for Photographic Research at University of Wales, Newport, Tim Brennan’s English Anxieties explores the fascinating work of Mass Observation (MO).

Founded in 1937 by Tom Harrisson, Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings, MO’s ambition was to create an ‘anthropology of ourselves’. Using a team of trained observers and volunteer writers, this group looked to gather information concerning everyday life to constitute a new understanding of British society. Though considered progressive in that it looked to give a voice to ordinary people, for some, MO was perceived as an intrusion based on concealed methods of recording social behaviour.

This exhibition sees Brennan’s encounter with the MO archive configured as a multi media response to history. It combines an artist’s book, vinyl drawings, original archival material and the re-working of a fascinating account by TC Lethbridge of a concealed enemy presence in Cambridgeshire. Here the paranoia of the times associated with the war and threat of Fascism prevalent in the British popular press and literary imagination are evident. Lethbridge wrote about litter trails, marks on walls and telegraph poles and coded messages concealed in the carefully torn edges of cigarette packets. Taking descriptions and drawings made by Lethbridge as a starting point Brennan represents this data in the form of large, colourful maps inspired by the Isotype system. This new visual account becomes the basis for an installation that is close to the incident room, the scene of a crime, evoking the ‘The Spy’ as a figure of intrigue but also something to be feared.

English Anxieties’ second theme revolves around the work of the Ashington Miners whose exhibition Unprofessional Painting was shown in London during the 1940s. Brennan creates an alternative archival space for the work as a dismantled artist's book whose pages consist of assemblages or still-life tableaux that evoke Modernist forms. In this work Brennan reminds us of the cultural problems as well as the social possibilities of art to picture everyday life.

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