From the Arts Council Collection

Touring the UK, Poland and Sweden from March 2008 to January 2010.

Curated by David Allan Mellor, Professor of Art history at the University of Sussex, 'No Such Thing as Society' documents British photography from the 1960s to the late 1980s. Drawing on the collections of the Arts Council and British Council it gives a radically new picture of theses turbulent decades.

The early 1970s saw the emergance of new approaches to photography, which focused on social realism. For example, Tony Ray-Jones captured the comedies of social class and human behaviour within the constraints of British culture. The human cost of de-industrialisation in the late 1970s and the 1980s were central themes of documentary photographers of the period and are demonstrated by the work of Chris Kilip and Paul Graham. The social disasters captured in their work contrast sharply with Martin Parr's colour photographs of holiday makers in New Brighton.

TOUR INFORMATION:

15 March - 27 April 2008
Aberystwyth Art Gallery, Aberystwyth

10 May - 13 July 2008
Tullie House, Carlisle

19 July - 31 August 2008
Art Gallery, Leeds

12 September - 1 November 2008
The Exchange, Penzance

14 November 2008 - 4 January 2009
Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (Poland)

31 January - 31 May 2009
Arbetets Museum, Norrkoping (Sweden)

4 July - 4 October 2009
National Museum and Gallery, Cardiff

31 October 2009 - 24 March 2010
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle