Overview

A document of British photography from the late 1960s until the late 1980s, ‘No such thing as society’ draws from the collections of the Arts Council and the British Council to give a radically new picture of these two turbulent decades.

Serving as witness to the unrest and transition in British society from the late 1960s until the 1980s, this exhibition takes its name from the famous Margaret Thatcher statement: “…society? There is no such thing. There are individual men and women and there are families.” The rise of Thatcherism is firmly associated with the miners’ strikes and conflict in Northern Ireland, as well as radical shifts in the structure of society.

The show is curated by David Alan Mellor, University of Sussex, and includes photographs by Keith Arnatt, Peter Mitchell, Martin Parr, Peter Fraser, Gilbert & George, Paul Graham, Brian Griffin, Bob Long, Tony Ray-Jones, Jurgen Schadeberg, Graham Smith, Chris Steele-Perkins, Homer Sykes, Paul Trevor.

The exhibition is a Hayward Touring Show.