Tim Brennan: English Anxieties

About

Tim Brennan: English Anxieties explores the archive of Mass Observation (MO). Founded in 1937 by Tom Harrisson, Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings, MO used a team of trained observers and volunteer writers to gather information concerning everyday life in Britain. Though considered progressive in giving a voice to ordinary people, for some, MO was perceived as an intrusion based on concealed methods of recording social behaviour. Brennan's encounter with the MO archive combines an artist's book, vinyl drawings, original archival material and the re-working of a fascinating account by British explorer and archaeologist T.C. Lethbridge of a concealed enemy presence in Cambridgeshire. Taking descriptions and drawings made by Lethbridge as a starting point, Brennan represents this data in the form of large, colourful maps inspired by the Isotype graphical system developed in the 1930s. English Anxieties' second theme revolves around the work of the Ashington Miners, whose exhibition Unprofessional Painting was shown in London during the 1940s. Here, Brennan presents MO archival material in the form of a dismantled artist's book, whose pages consist of assemblages or still life tableaux evoking Modernist forms.