Tish Murtha Portrait by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha By Kenn Taylor In 2021, when we were all still reeling from the ongoing effects of the pandemic, a Kickstarter on social media caught my eye: a project to make a documentary about the life of photographer Tish Murtha, by director Paul Sng and Tish’s daughter Ella. I knew of Murtha’s work through my deep interest in the photography of working-class communities and places. Yet, until I read the synopsis of the film, I’d not been fully aware of the scope of Murtha’s work, or the extent to which she was let down as an artist and a person by society ..read more

By Kenn Taylor Lime Street, Lives Passing By. Photo: Tom Wood Photie Man: 50 Years of Tom Wood at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery is the most comprehensive exhibition to date of the work of Wood, who is one of Britain’s most important image-makers. “It was something I wanted to do for the city,” Wood says. “The work was made here and I’ve had big shows all over the world; Moscow, France, China even, but not Liverpool.” Wood’s images have until recently been more embraced by publishers and gallerists internationally. In the UK, he has sometimes been pigeonholed as a “documentarian of working-cla ..read more

By Kenn Taylor Later this year, the town of Birkenhead becomes an art gallery. The Town is the Gallery, a large-scale, multi-venue programme will encompass everything from pop-up galleries and public art installations to workshops and participatory projects. Ryan Gauge, co-founder of organisers Convenience Gallery, says, “Using the town as the canvas, we’re working to achieve the aim that anywhere can be a place for arts and culture.” Taking place over several months, the programme will peak in September. “We have had contact from over seventy artists so far and we’re really excited by all th ..read more

By Kenn Taylor I grew up on Merseyside in the 1980s and 90s, when this region around Liverpool found itself on the extreme end of the UK’s wave of industrial decline in that period. This had a profound effect on my working-class family and community, and it shaped the way I think ever since. Later, a period of new investment in culture and heritage in the area as a form of urban regeneration, coupled with increasing access to higher education, enabled me to work in creative fields not remotely accessible to my parents. Yet this very access exposed me to the hollowness of some of these changes ..read more

Photie Man: 50 Years of Tom Wood, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 20 May 2023 – 7 Jan 2024 Photo: Robin Clewley By Kenn Taylor Even if you’ve not heard of Tom Wood, the photographer now subject to a huge retrospective at the Walker, you’re likely to have come across his images: young sharply-dressed folks confidently posing for the camera; dancers lit up by flash in an 1980s nightclub; a grandparent and child clinging to each other as they stare through a bus window. Wood hails from County Mayo, in Ireland, and he’s exhibited everywhere from the USA to the Netherlands, China to France. Yet, as ..read more

Words by Kenn Taylor Images by Kenn Taylor and Denise Courcoux Our Day Out. A place of colour. And what colour. The vivid orange of the Golden Goose arcade. The deep saltwashed blue of the folding RNLI doors. The flaking yellow and green of the New Palace. Its canopied row of smiling plastic signs screaming sugar-sparkling doughnuts, cold ice cream and rubbery hot dogs. Our Day Out. A place of colour. And what colour. The vivid orange of the Golden Goose arcade. The deep saltwashed blue of the folding RNLI doors. The flaking yellow and green of the New Palace. Its canopied row of smiling pl ..read more

Words and images Kenn Taylor Art of the Terraces, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool 05 Nov 2022 – 12 Mar 2023 “One of the biggest working class youth cults ever but because its home was the football terraces rather than universities or art schools it went largely unexplored by the media.” This quote from Paolo Hewitt opens the show. The first thing that hits you though is the ‘gang’ of mannequins decked out in some of the iconic clobber of Casuals culture: polo shirts and sports jackets to cords and drainpipe jeans. And of course, trainers – especially Adidas trainers. It creates a strong first i ..read more

By Kenn Taylor I grew up in a region that was scarred by economic decline and disinvestment. It was a surprise to me as I got older and travelled further that some people thought decaying buildings, places abandoned and boarded-up, areas of wasteland that stayed there forever, were unusual, exciting even. Sure, I can appreciate the more interesting visual layers to be found where nature is eating away at human effort. But I’ve also experienced how so many places get reduced to just that decay. How the media will pick out declined structures to capture a picture they had in mind before they eve ..read more

An essay on a collabortive art project in Sheffield Words: Kenn Taylor Images: Shared Programme Landmark is an art project created through collaboration between artists Emilie Taylor and Christopher Jarratt and eleven people they met at Project 6, a drug and alcohol support service. On a baking hot day in Sheffield, I meet six of those eleven, Sam, Ben, Ruth, Matt, Lee and Dave. Along with Emilie and Christopher, who details the concept at the heart of the project: “We wanted to map and tell the stories of people’s journeys and moments of great change in their lives through the languages of ..read more

By Kenn Taylor But you don’t sound like you’re from Merseyside? So you’ve lost your accent? Did you go to a good school then? I am tired of these questions. Every one of which is laced with prejudice and projection, even if those asking don’t intend it. Aside from any personal frustration at them, what’s more important is they illustrate some of the skewed perceptions that many middle-class people have in their encounters with working-class people. Whilst my accent isn’t the strongest going, it is the one I have had my whole life. A mixture, not untypical, of my mum’s Liverpudlian, my dad’s ..read more