For Tish: a screening and flash residency-in-response

Curated by the artist members of PLOT Collective (Hatty Frances Bell, Alice Butler, Anna Gormley, and Kelly O’Brien) in partnership with SVA and Stroud Film Festival and supported by the British Art Network, For Tish: a screening and flash residency-in-response was a two-part event comprising a film screening and a live, in-process, durational exhibition that considered and corresponded with the life and practice of the working-class woman photographer from South Shields, Tish Murtha (1956–2013).

Challenging the socio-economic inequalities of 1970s-80s Thatcher’s Britain, Tish’s political and intimate images chronicled the precarious and beautiful lives of the working class Tyneside communities she knew. For Tish was an event that experimented with the form and voice of the seminar format: a part photographic part filmic part performative part writing-aloud happening in memory and in response to the life, work, archive, and legacy of Murtha, whose work has been marginalised by dominant histories. In this two-part event, the documentary Tish (2023, directed by Paul Sng) was screened, wherein the the artist’s daughter, Ella Murtha, shines a light on the importance of Tish’s photographs, archive, and legacy; questions why Tish’s work has not received the critical attention it deserves. This event facilitated open and inclusive dialogue with attendees following the screening, extending into a responsive flash residency-meets-exhibition, wherein Bell, Butler, Gormley, and O’Brien critically and creatively activated the space with images, writings, interventions, and conversations.

The event was PLOT’s seedling spring 2024 event; the collective are plotting further conversations and happenings which together seek to push the live and interdependent possibilities of expanded photographic practice and film in Stroud and the Southwest, with the view to building and supporting a community of practitioners interested in working in this area in the locality and beyond.