Poor Things is an exhibition that has come out of conversations about art and social class. Conversations that artists Emma Hart and Dean Kenning have had together as friends, and with the Fruitmarket, a free public space for art.
The exhibition features artists: Linda Aloysius, Eric Bainbridge, Jonathan Baldock, Simeon Barclay, Joseph Buckley, Beagles & Ramsay, Chila Burman, Andrew Cooper, Jamie Cooper, Penny Goring, Brian Griffiths, Emma Hart, Lee Holden, Dean Kenning, Josie KO, Rosie McGinn, Rebecca Moss, Janette Parris, Anne Ryan, Aled Simons, Laura Yuile. It is hoped the exhibition will ignite conversations about class through sculpture.
Class is a social relation of power defined by inequality and exploitation. Following Bourdieu, both Hart and Kenning understand class and the reproduction of class hierarchies not only in terms of economic capital, but social and cultural capital: artists from lower class backgrounds may be ‘poor’ not only in terms of money, but also time, space, know-how, confidence, availability and contacts. At the same time, class speaks positively to values, experiences, traditions, pleasures, attitudes and identities which can crash with a richness and appeal into the often staid and exclusionary realms of ‘high art’ in shapes which are, in equal measure, painful, poignant, joyous, strange and true.