Description
Our 2025 exhibition explored the overlooked richness and diversity of working-class life and creative expression from the 1950s to now.
Challenging long-standing inequities and misrepresentation, this exhibition presented compelling assertions of pride, tenderness, resilience, humour and hopefulness, and moments of play, joy and rest. Looking beyond the often reductive narratives of crisis and struggle that traditionally characterise representation of working-class people and communities in British arts institutions, Lives Less Ordinary championed a gaze from within, from artists from working-class backgrounds who have used their creativity to reflect wide-ranging experiences and identities, depicting and defining their culture and communities on their own terms.
Lives Less Ordinary brought together ceramics, film, painting, photography and sculpture from wide-ranging public collections, archives, and contemporary artists across the UK, to explore a nuanced and authentic reflection of working-class experience, within an architectural setting that both manifests and interrogates wealth and privilege.
Lives Less Ordinary was a Two Temple Place exhibition, conceived and curated by Samantha Manton.
The exhibition was supported by Museum as Muck, the Working Class British Art Network, Working Class Creatives Database and Working Arts Club, as well as an advisory group of noted advocates for those underrepresented in the arts sector – Beth Hughes, Michelle McGrath, Jon Sleigh & Afia Yeboah.
The catalogue features an introduction from Curator, Samantha Manton, an essay from Beth Hughes of the Working Class British Art Network and an ‘In Conversation’ between artists Mark Leckey and Rene Matic plus much more.
