Pete McGovern
'Foodchain'
& 'Out In The Sticks'
Apr 2011

Foodchain by Nick May and Ben Holland presents exploitation of fenlands farmers and immigrant and indigenous labour by Tesco.

Arts council and local authority funding bring a subject typically dealt with by an on-the-cheap BBC2 or Channel 4 half hour documentary into the recently refurbished Usher Gallery in Lincoln. Photography and video interviews accompany a projection of food production processes. No mention of the failure to reform the Common Agricultural Policy or nitrogen waste or compassion in world farming but an undemanding curator shoe-in. The imagery is clean and contemporary, technically good but creatively generic. Work and exploitation/alienation is not a new subject but perhaps inevitably this project is particularly lightweight when compared to series by Sebastião Salgado or Lee Friedlander or Lewis Hine or, going back still further, the Cuban born American photographer PH Emerson - whose own fenlands photography from a century ago is intrinsically more revealing while less overtly didactic. The need to comply with the agenda of funding bodies would not have been his over-riding concern, even if his aims overlapped.

Steve McQueen's 'Art of Darkness' encountering the exploitation of mine workers in South Africa, was shown nearby as part of the Uneven Geographies at the Nottingham Contemporary space last summer - a reminder to us that it is possible to handle social comment through actual art.

Meanwhile over in the Collection (a scaly wart of a modern museum), 'Out In The Sticks' is a MLA Renaissance East Midlands funded community project aimed primarily at the schools sector judging by the emphasis on that area in the statistical analysis on their website. Student Laura Lee employs the camera to address the issue of under representation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans (LGBT) people living and working in rural Lincolnshire. Unfortunately parents with young children were backing out sharpish when straying into this exhibition space despite the fact it is sweetly affirmative in every sense.

Foodchain runs till 30th May 2011.

Out In the Sticks ends 6th May 2011.