Last summer six residents of Hackney, East London, came together with artist Andy Sewell and LSE researcher Eileen Alexander to take photographs in response to a series of open-ended prompts about their lives and the cost of living crisis. During weekly meetings the group shared their pictures, discussing how the images made them feel and the ideas they provoked. In doing so, they returned repeatedly to the question Why are things this way? They asked this question out of anger and frustration – and with a sense that things could be different, things could be better.
Weaving together pictures taken by the group with fragments of text from our meetings, this installation draws on the distinctive vision and voice of each participant to create something whole, reflecting the rhythms and explorations of the group.
On the gallery wall we see what initially reads as a conventional hang of pictures with captions underneath. Moving closer we find the relationship between the lines of text and the images is less direct than we might expect.
The texts don’t explain the images, but give them a particular charge, setting up a complex and open-ended set of relationships. The work can be read vertically, each text resonating with the image above, and also horizontally, the pictures and words building on each other with the rhythm of a conversation or a song, punctuated by the refrain, Why are things this way?
Why are things this way? is the result of an experiment, an attempt to create an artwork and a piece of academic research simultaneously and to draw on the insights and talents of a diverse group of people. Disrupting an arms-length understanding of the world, this exhibition offers a more direct view of the multiple interconnected challenges many people are navigating in Britain today, and voices calls for another – more humane – way of thinking about and organising our society.
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