Art Noticeboard: Tish Murtha - The Photographers' Gallery

Tuesday 19 June 2018

Tish Murtha - The Photographers' Gallery

Tish Murtha, Karen on overturned chair, 1980

Tish Murtha: Works, 1976-1991 is at The Photographers' Gallery until 14 October, 2018
From the Photographers' Gallery website:
Tish Murtha: Works 1976 – 1991 is a new exhibition which charts the remarkable accomplishments of documentary photographer Tish Murtha (b. South Shields 1956 - d. 2013) and offers a tender and frank perspective on a historic moment of social deprivation and instability in Britain.
The exhibition surveys six major bodies of work; Newport Pub (1976/78); Elswick Kids (1978); Juvenile Jazz Bands (1979); Youth Unemployment (1980); London by Night (1983) and Elswick Revisited (1987 – 1991) using both vintage and contemporary prints...
In 1976, aged 20, Tish Murtha left Newcastle upon Tyne to study at the influential School of Documentary Photography at Newport College of Art under the guidance of Magnum photographer David Hurn. The earliest series in this show, Newport Pub, dates from this period – where Murtha photographed the realities of everyday life for the regulars of a typical public house, ‘The New Found Out’ in a deprived area.
Murtha felt a genuine sense of obligation to the communities of her home in the North East, and had chosen a course of study which would make her a more effective photographer, one who could highlight the social disadvantages that she herself had suffered.
On returning to the North East, Murtha created Elswick Kids, documenting the children playing on her local streets...
Youth Unemployment combines sharp social observation with a lyrical sense of place and form. Murtha witnessed the dereliction of young lives up close and the figures that populate her series were often friends, family and neighbours. These strong personal ties to the subject matter compelled her towards creating work that could help those being offered little assistance in times of mass factory and mine closures. Witnessing government policies beginning to take hold on her community, she used her photography to confront the reality and impact of the political decision making of the day...
After the Youth Unemployment exhibition in 1981, Murtha moved to London where she was commissioned by The Photographers’ Gallery to create a series on the sex industry in Soho for the group exhibition London by Night (1983)...
The final series in the exhibition, Elswick Revisted touches on racism and the impact of increasing cultural diversity in the area she knew so well. As with all of her photography, the series is an impassioned investigation into the lived reality of political policies, living conditions and communities struggling to survive in austere and transitional times. Parallels to contemporary living conditions, austerity politics and growing social inequality, bring a timely urgency to viewing Murtha’s work.
(Read full text here.)