The Women Were Very Powerful (Pic: courtesy of Narbi Price)
Mike Quille reviews an exhibition of paintings, spoken word and short films and interviews the creators – Narbi Price, Mark Hudson and Carl Joyce
‘Coming back brockens’ is pit slang for when the pillars of rock supporting the roof are broken by the retreating pitmen, after the coal has been dug out. It can also apply to the pitmen themselves, returning from the pit exhausted or injured.
‘Going Back Brockens: Monuments and Rhetoric after the Miners’ Strike’ is the title of a brilliant exhibition which is being shown at the perfect venue – the field at the Miners’ Gala in Durham, on Saturday 12th July.
Through a combination of paintings, spoken words, and short films made by Narbi Price, Mark Hudson and Carl Joyce, it explores the memories, reflections and feelings of local people living with the collapse of the coal industry in the eighties and nineties, and the resulting breakdown of coalfield communities.
And although it’s firmly rooted in the history and lives of people in the Durham coalfield, it would work just as well in the Central Belt of Scotland, South Wales, parts of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire – and for that matter Lorraine, Silesia, and Kentucky. These are the ‘left-behind’ neighbourhoods of late capitalism, brutally ‘brocken’ and with high rates of unemployment, sickness, poverty, crime and drug and alcohol abuse.
If You Want To Change Things, You Cannit Change Them From the Floor (Pic: courtesy of Narbi Price)
Marking 40 years since the Miners’ Strike, local artist Narbi Price has painted 40 everyday scenes across the Durham coalfield.
The Axe Came Down, and That Was It (Pic: courtesy of Narbi Price)
There are no people in the paintings of empty landscapes, bricked-up windows, fences and railings, and barbed wire.
It Doesn’t Work That Way (Pic: courtesy of Narbi Price)
The paintings evoke emptiness and blocked opportunities, broken dreams and painful memories. The emptiness expresses deindustrialization – the sudden flight of capital from the area in the 80s and 90s, leaving whole communities without much employment, income or purpose.
Perhaps the emptiness also expresses the sad lack of leadership by the Labour Party – its failure to represent working-class hopes and aspirations, and the palpable sense of being abandoned by investors and politicians which has helped far-right parties like Reform UK breed and flourish, locally and nationally. As Narbi Price says of the traumatic effect of the pit closures:
Its ghost is unavoidably there in the places we live, in the layout of the streets, in the ubiquitous half winding wheel monuments, in a peculiar mixture of anger and sentimentality. I think that globally the left is crying out for charismatic leaders, figureheads that people can invest their hope into.
Q. The titles of the paintings are clearly taken from Mark’s interviews for his 1994 book ‘Coming Back Brockens: A Year in the Life of a Mining Village’, and are helpful counterpoints to the images. Especially if the viewer hears a relevant snatch of an interview while looking at one of your paintings! What was your method when creating the images?
Narbi Price: Hearing that he had the tapes of the interviews, which until now have never been heard at all, was tremendously exciting. The voices were swimming around during the painting process in one way or another throughout. The usages are not illustrative, it was an organic process; certain snippets naturally attached themselves to certain paintings. The ephemeral pedestrian poetry of people’s speech takes on a new life and new weight when paired with the paintings.
The paintings all have titles which are taken from the accompanying sound installation created by Mark Hudson, comprising snatches of interviews conducted for his 1994 book ‘Coming Back Brockens’, written at a time when the pit closures was still very raw in the collective memory. The voices are from Horden, a large pit village which at one time employed several thousand men and was one of the biggest and most productive pits in Europe. As Mark Hudson says, ‘They’re real people talking about important stuff that happened to them, at a time when ordinary people were effectively taking on the British government from their kitchen tables.’
Q. One recent seismic shift in politics is the turn away from the Labour Party, to far-right politics. What are the reasons for that, do you think? And do you think this shift of attitudes has implications for the role of creative and cultural workers like yourself?
Mark Hudson: It’s very poignant that the way the Labour Party is talked about by some of the speakers, as though it is self-evidently the vehicle for the advancement of the working class, will bear little relation to the Labour Party as it appears to most people today. That almost golden ring to the sound of the words, THE LABOUR PARTY – even for people who spent most of their lives working for it – could have an almost derisory feel now.
“Socialism” as the word is used by some of the speakers could feel like something from a distant time that no longer has relevance in the reality of today. When I heard about the gains Reform UK were making in the area I made a point of including an interview excerpt with a veteran woman Labour councillor, describing collecting for the Spanish refugees in 1936 – “when the Spanish Civil War was in full blast” – and how the people of Easington Colliery gave generously even though they were in dire circumstances. She then says that the aim of the Labour women was “International Socialism”.
Artists and writers should certainly organise to combat racism and fascism.
Rhetoric and monuments
So as you look into the paintings, you’re also hearing the raw, emotional voices of local people relating stories and feelings which mesh with the visual art. These stories are the ‘rhetoric’ of the subtitle, accompanying the ‘monuments’ of empty landscapes and blocked views depicted in the paintings.
Everybody Took Their Turn (Pic: courtesy of Narbi Price)
The striking absence of people in the paintings is immersive – it draws you into the paintings, and they become settings for the memories, thoughts and feelings of the people in the interviews that you’re hearing. And those memories combine with our own memories of the past, of the busy and lively working-class communities before their devastation by Thatcher and the untamed market forces of late capitalism.
Where We Belong
Alongside the paintings and spoken words are six short, poignant films by local filmmaker Carl Joyce, about present-day inhabitants of pit villages. The overall title is Where We Belong, and the stories are called Resilience; Fractured; Dismissed; After Coal; Pit Yacker; and Healing. The characters and their stories vary, but common themes emerge, most notably a deep, aching sense of sadness combined with a certain resilience – a determination to look forward as well as back, and to cope as positively as possible with a troubling situation.
Joseph, from the short film Resilience, looking at the miners’ monument in Horden (Pic: courtesy Carl Joyce)
Q. How do you see the future for places like Horden, Blackhall, and Easington? Will these pockets of deprivation gradually fade away with economic growth; or are they harbingers for how other places will become, disintegrating socially and economically under the pressures of unemployment, continuing austerity, climate breakdown etc.?
Carl: I think the suffering, bitterness, and disappointment are still very much present, but they’ve become part of everyday life for many. After 40 years, people have adapted to the lack of jobs and opportunities; it’s almost become normalized. I recently interviewed someone from Horden for another project, and he said, “There aren’t as many windows being smashed in the street as there used to be, the area’s massively improved. It only happens every few months now.”
That really struck me, the fact that someone can see fewer smashed windows as a sign of improvement, it shows how deeply ingrained these conditions are. For many in these communities, that kind of environment has become their reality, it shouldn’t be, but it is. It speaks volumes about how people have adjusted to long term decline and hardship, not necessarily by overcoming it, but by learning to live with it.
That sudden absence of industry led to a lack of jobs, which then triggered a chain reaction – poor housing, rising crime, drug use, and a general sense of decline. That lack of investment has lasted for 40 years and it’s created a cycle that’s very hard to break. But with real, sustained investment, change is possible.
Brooke, from the short film Dismissed (Pic: courtesy of Carl Joyce)
Cultural democracy in practice
Overall, the paintings, spoken words and films work in your imagination like a ghostly play, weaving themes of brokenness and partial healing across time and place. The paintings and the voices from the past illustrate each other, and both are echoed by the contemporary images and voices in the films. It is a moving, imaginative symphony, as tender and truthful a piece of community-based art as has ever been made about coalfield communities.
Credit for this exhibition must also go to the curators from No More Nowt, a community arts project which is encouraging communities across County Durham to host their own exhibitions, capturing more stories, memories and reflections about life in a post-mining era.
Q. Can you tell us a bit more about ‘No More Nowt’, and its commitment to community-based arts projects?
Jess Hunt: This project challenged the idea that ‘nowt happens’ in County Durham by encouraging communities, particularly those with low cultural provision and access, to co-create culture with our support.
We have worked extensively with the communities of East Durham and remain based in Peterlee but also more recently begun to explore how we could use our learning and skills to enable more communities and artists in the county to make culture that was relevant to them. This includes the work with ‘Going Back Brockens’.
We also have a bit of a reputation for our projects popping up wherever people feel they should – we don’t tend to use traditional arts and cultural spaces like galleries and museums (although our work is pretty awesome and could definitely be in collections and spaces like this). This is because we know that the magic of discovering art and culture lies in finding it in everyday places and spaces where you feel you belong.
Many of the people we work with say things along the lines of ‘art isn’t for places like this or people like me’ ‘I haven’t done art since I was at school’ ‘I love arts and crafts but I’m not good at it’ ‘I wouldn’t know what to do in a gallery or theatre etc’ and we work hard to challenge this idea.
In conclusion, ‘Going Back Brockens’ is an excellent example of cultural democracy, of making artworks which are a relevant, integral part of working-class lives, without patronising or twisting the truth of the lives, memories, and struggles of our class.
After exhibition at the MIners’ Gala, ‘Going Back Brockens’ will be shown in Horden, at St. Mary’s church, ‘The Miners’ Cathedral’.
Narbi Price and Mark Hudson in front of St Mary’s church, Horden (Pic: courtesy of the artists)
