WCCD Member Nick Smith currently has a solo exhibition at The Birley, Preston.
'We Were Both Wrong' will showcase a new moving image work that maps the chaotic shift from modernism to capitalism within the built environment. The work brings together images from the New Town photographic archives and libraries in the south of England, scans from manuals on building materials and architectural digests, news and amateur footage scraped from online resources and footage shot both for work and pleasure while undergoing my job as property inspector.
"I work primarily in video collage and photographic installations to explore the role of class within the context of the built environment. My most recent work has been heavily focused on a body of research come archive I have been constructing for the last 6 years. This process started by gaining access to photographic archives documenting the construction of New Towns in the South of England. Around this time I started working as property inspector and was very displeased with my circumstances and lack of time to develop my practice. After a few years something clicked and I realised that my job was also a kind of body of research in and of itself, my labour was in some way a creative act that transcended the dreary zero hour contract work I found myself in.
This process has accumulated into a significant new work titled ‘We We’re Both Wrong’, it’s a single channel moving image work that maps the chaotic shift from modernism to capitalism using all this material I have been gathering. I am also developing the photographic and audio side of my practice and am really looking forward to seeing where that takes me."
‘We Were Both Wrong’ will be shown at The Birley, Preston Oct 19th - Nov 20th
The exhibition will close with a talk with Lynsey Hanley, who wrote Respectable: Crossing the Class Divide, and Estates: An Intimate History