Untameable: The Barry Hines Archive exhibition
On until 20 December 2019
Monday-Friday 9am to 7pm
Saturday 12pm to 6pm
Exhibition Gallery
Mezzanine Level
Western Bank Library
Sheffield S10
Barry Hines wrote for and from his community, and unflinchingly chronicled the social injustices he witnessed: from the failure of the education system and lack of opportunity found in A Kestrel for a Knave, and the examination of land ownership and alienated labour in The Gamekeeper, to the devastating effect that Thatcherism had on Sheffield in Looks and Smiles, and the increasingly toxic climate of nuclear threat during the 1980s in Threads.
The project title highlights Hines’s dogged determination over three decades to write about the changing personal and political landscapes of working-class life in South Yorkshire. Including reworkings of rare documents and material from the archive about the Miners’ strike, this collection also illustrates the relevance of Hines’s writing in the twenty-first century, as new political, cultural and social divides open up in Britain and beyond.
This exhibition is curated by artists Patrick Murphy and Anton Want, inspired by Barry Hines’s writing and the contents of his archive held in The University of Sheffield.
The artists have worked closely with Dr David Forrest from the School of English whose work with Professor Sue Vice on Hines has drawn widely on the archive.
The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign were delighted to be organising events at Kelham Island and the City Hall this year in collaboration with the University of Sheffield, Faculty of Arts and Humanities. We are very keen to promote the work of Barry Hines. He writes from the heart, his work is raw, historically accurate and heavily critical of the ruling class. It is a privilege to be part of promoting these unpublished works and make them available for the public to see.
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