The curator of the Lives Less Ordinary calls Jonathan Jones’s review into question. Jonathan Jones claims that the exhibition Lives Less Ordinary seeks to define the working class as a “single, stable body”, though goes on to acknowledge the ways in which the artists featured question and expand what it might mean to be working class (Lives Less Ordinary review – is this really a fair view of the British working class?, 27 January).
This is one of the entrenched myths the exhibition aims to do away with. Reflecting the nuanced intersections of class, race, religion, gender, sexuality, and migrant status, the wide-ranging selection of the artists affirms “working classness as something dynamic and plural”, as is clearly stated in one of the exhibition’s wall texts.
Bringing forth expressions of pride and joy, family and community, humour and hope, the show deliberately eschews the all-too-familiar portrayals of “the ways people work and survive” that Mr Jones seems to feel working-class artists owe him. I am glad we agree that the art on display is “excellent”. But to present it recontextualised through class is, to me and many others, much more than “a heavy load of idealism”. Perhaps Mr Jones feels justified in evaluating whose experiences are “authentically” working class. I think the artists do a better job.
