{"id":16118,"date":"2024-01-17T12:10:57","date_gmt":"2024-01-17T12:10:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/grim-visions-of-broken-britain-a-review-of-the-film-tish-and-the-photography-of-tish-murtha\/"},"modified":"2024-01-17T12:10:57","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T12:10:57","slug":"grim-visions-of-broken-britain-a-review-of-the-film-tish-and-the-photography-of-tish-murtha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/grim-visions-of-broken-britain-a-review-of-the-film-tish-and-the-photography-of-tish-murtha\/","title":{"rendered":"Grim, glorious visions of broken Britain: a review of the film &#8216;Tish&#8217;, and the photography of Tish Murtha"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-16107\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/74b70e117240790040e9a0b48f4f91c3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2500\" height=\"1862\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/74b70e117240790040e9a0b48f4f91c3.jpg 2500w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/74b70e117240790040e9a0b48f4f91c3-600x447.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/74b70e117240790040e9a0b48f4f91c3-300x223.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/74b70e117240790040e9a0b48f4f91c3-441x328.jpg 441w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/74b70e117240790040e9a0b48f4f91c3-768x572.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/74b70e117240790040e9a0b48f4f91c3-1536x1144.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/74b70e117240790040e9a0b48f4f91c3-2048x1525.jpg 2048w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/74b70e117240790040e9a0b48f4f91c3-1x1.jpg 1w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/74b70e117240790040e9a0b48f4f91c3-10x7.jpg 10w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2500px) 100vw, 2500px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Brett Gregory <\/strong>reviews &#8216;Tish&#8217;, directed by Paul Sng, 2023, and presents some of Tish Murtha&#8217;s photographs<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HeKxxSYwDnw?si=XkE3dA02PMJQRjQA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" title=\"YouTube video player\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8216;My use of photography and the approach to it is based on the conviction that the fundamental value of the medium is its capacity to provide direct, accurate and vital records of the conditions, events and experiences that shape our lives.&#8217;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This is a quote from one of Patricia \u2018Tish\u2019 Murtha\u2019s essays as narrated by Maxine Peake in Paul Sng\u2019s observational and performative documentary, \u2018Tish\u2019, from 2023. In turn, it can be understood to be at the core of her socialist agenda as a working-class photographer and social realist documentarian.<\/p>\n<p>As a 52-year-old working-class filmmaker myself, it\u2019s depressing to see that the desolate council estate where she was raised in Elswick, Newcastle, was very similar in style and content to the miserable maze of treacherous terraced houses where I grew up in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. Places where poverty, illiteracy, alcoholism, drugs, child abuse, domestic violence, vandalism and boredom were the main attractions.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-16110\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Ex_Miner_New_Found_out_Pub_Newport_1977__Ella_Murtha.jpg\" alt=\"Ex Miner New Found out Pub Newport 1977 Ella Murtha\" width=\"493\" height=\"331\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Ex_Miner_New_Found_out_Pub_Newport_1977__Ella_Murtha.jpg 1608w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Ex_Miner_New_Found_out_Pub_Newport_1977__Ella_Murtha-600x403.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Ex_Miner_New_Found_out_Pub_Newport_1977__Ella_Murtha-300x201.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Ex_Miner_New_Found_out_Pub_Newport_1977__Ella_Murtha-441x296.jpg 441w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Ex_Miner_New_Found_out_Pub_Newport_1977__Ella_Murtha-768x516.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Ex_Miner_New_Found_out_Pub_Newport_1977__Ella_Murtha-1536x1032.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Ex_Miner_New_Found_out_Pub_Newport_1977__Ella_Murtha-1x1.jpg 1w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Ex_Miner_New_Found_out_Pub_Newport_1977__Ella_Murtha-10x7.jpg 10w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 493px) 100vw, 493px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Ex-Miner, New Found Out Pub, Newport, 1977 \u00a9 Ella Murtha.\u00a0<\/em><em>In 1976 Tish Murtha, with support from her tutors Dennis Birkwood and Mick Henry, secured a funded place on a photography course at Newport College of Art and Design run by David Hurn. The New Found Out Pub on Cambrian Road in Newport was notorious for serving lumpy cider.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>While the working-class residents of Elswick were ravaged by the descent and dismantling of the steel and shipbuilding industries during the latter part of the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century, Mansfield, a mining community, was decimated and deformed by the Thatcher-led pit closures in the early to mid-1980s. This mining community had been composed almost entirely of regional migrants, particularly from Scotland, Wales and, coincidentally, Tyneside. Indeed, the older lads I sometimes hung around with outside the local shops during my mid-teens \u2013 Carl, JJ, Biddy, Kev and Mozz \u2013 were all Geordies.<\/p>\n<p>In the summer of 1985, I remember that JJ saved up enough money to get a tattoo of his beloved Newcastle United on his arm, but when he peeled the scab off after a few days it read \u2018Newcastle <em>Uniten<\/em>\u2019 instead. It seemed that even the tattoo artist in town was illiterate.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, we all laughed and poked fun at him, and he told us to \u2018Ga&#8217;an away or a&#8217;ll boot the shite oot ya!\u2019 before storming off home. A week later and he then triumphantly reappeared outside of the shops, pulled up his sleeve and revealed to us that \u2018Uniten\u2019 was no more, had never even happened, for it had now been replaced by a new tattoo of a big red rose. I asked him what the \u2018Newcastle Rose\u2019 stood for, but he said, \u2018It divvn&#8217;t matter, like. It looks canny. The lasses will gan mad for it.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Around this time the accent, dialect and earthy humour of the North East had also begun to pervade wider popular culture in the UK. There was the highly successful television series, \u2018Auf Wiedersehen, Pet\u2019, the widely read \u2018Viz\u2019 comic, the volcanic rise of the footballer, Paul Gascoigne, and, of course, the ubiquitous and inimitable Newcastle Brown Ale. The lads told me, stony-faced, that there was actually a wing in Newcastle General Hospital where men who were addicted to \u2018Newkie Brown\u2019 received treatment, and I believed them.<\/p>\n<p>They never told me about Tish Murtha from Elswick though. If she wasn\u2019t on the telly with Terry Wogan, or in a band on Top of the Pops, or running the 1500 metres at the Olympics, how would they have known about her? How would they have known that she was a photographer, or that her work mattered, or that she was even alive? How would they have known that, in blazing black and white, she was documenting and dignifying dead-end lives like ours on a council estate which was just as dark and derelict as this one?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-16111\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Glenn_and_Paul_on_the_Washing_Line_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha.jpg\" alt=\"Glenn and Paul on the Washing Line Youth Unemployment 1981 Ella Murtha\" width=\"486\" height=\"334\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Glenn_and_Paul_on_the_Washing_Line_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha.jpg 2020w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Glenn_and_Paul_on_the_Washing_Line_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-600x412.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Glenn_and_Paul_on_the_Washing_Line_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-300x206.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Glenn_and_Paul_on_the_Washing_Line_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-441x303.jpg 441w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Glenn_and_Paul_on_the_Washing_Line_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-768x528.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Glenn_and_Paul_on_the_Washing_Line_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-1536x1055.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Glenn_and_Paul_on_the_Washing_Line_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-1x1.jpg 1w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Glenn_and_Paul_on_the_Washing_Line_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-10x7.jpg 10w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 486px) 100vw, 486px\" \/>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Glenn and Paul on the Washing Line, Youth Unemployment (1981) \u00a9 Ella Murtha<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8216;[O]ne has only to look at football grounds to see how the evils of extreme right-wing groups are being preached to youngsters who seek some diversion from the misery of unemployment.&#8217; \u2013 Mr Robert Brown, Labour MP for Newcastle upon Tyne West, House of Commons Debate, \u2018Redundancy Fund Bill\u2019 (Feb 1981)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Flats with their windows all boarded up; the bus stop smashed to smithereens; the burnt out car at the back of Spar; the drunk uncle who staggered home from the social club on a Sunday afternoon; the stepdad who combed margarine into his hair because he couldn\u2019t afford Brylcreem; the kids on the bottom estate who set fires in the park and danced in the ashes; the majorettes who twirled their maces and tossed them up higher than houses; the girls who pushed prams down the road as if they were ploughing a field; the mum of three who answered the door wearing sunglasses because she had two black eyes.<\/p>\n<p>Sng\u2019s documentary highlights that the main reason why people knew nothing about Tish Murtha and her photography was because she never received any financial support from the dead-eyed decision-makers who work for opaque, undemocratic organisations like Arts Council England.<\/p>\n<p>Why would she? This country\u2019s establishment doesn\u2019t understand, doesn\u2019t respect and doesn\u2019t care about working-class culture, its narratives, artefacts, experiences or its history. It never has and it never will. Working-class creatives are regarded as unsophisticated, untrustworthy, unruly and, much more importantly, unconnected. Butchers, bakers and candlestick makers gripping onto cheap, borrowed or stolen pens, paints and plectrums.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-16112\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_on_Spare_Ground_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha.jpg\" alt=\"Kids on Spare Ground Youth Unemployment 1981 Ella Murtha\" width=\"532\" height=\"347\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_on_Spare_Ground_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha.jpg 960w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_on_Spare_Ground_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-600x391.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_on_Spare_Ground_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-300x196.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_on_Spare_Ground_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-441x288.jpg 441w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_on_Spare_Ground_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-768x501.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_on_Spare_Ground_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-1x1.jpg 1w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_on_Spare_Ground_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-10x7.jpg 10w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 532px) 100vw, 532px\" \/>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Kids on Spare Ground, Youth Unemployment (1981) \u00a9 Ella Murtha<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u2018On the whole, reports Tish [Murtha], the only generation who understand these youngsters are pensioners, perhaps because they remember the Depression years.\u2019 &#8211; Blakelaw School\u2019s \u2018Roundabout Journal\u2019 (1981)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Tish got used to this kind of letter:<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2018Many thanks for your recent application for funding. We regret to inform you that your project proposal has been unsuccessful on this occasion. If you would like more specific feedback \u2026\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And so you either fund yourself or you just give up.<\/p>\n<p>Twenty years ago I was able to choose the former because I\u2019d secured a job as a lecturer in film and cultural studies at a college in Manchester. Out of my salary I self-funded, self-distributed and self-promoted numerous campaign and charity promos, music videos for struggling acts, an international short documentary and two documentary features. All of which received absolutely no financial assistance, exhibition or promotional support from publicly-funded entities like the British Film Institute, Film Hub North or HOME cinema.<\/p>\n<p>In turn, my debut working-class feature film, \u2018Nobody Loves You and You Don\u2019t Deserve to Exist\u2019, was part-funded by my redundancy money between 2016 and 2022, and the rest was paid for by loans, credit cards and an overdraft which I couldn\u2019t afford.<\/p>\n<p>Each year students used to ask me:<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2018How do you find the time to make all these films when you\u2019re teaching us as well?\u2019 And I\u2019d reply, \u2018It\u2019s easy: never get married, never have kids, never get a mortgage, never own a car and never go on holiday. See? There\u2019s plenty of time.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u2018That\u2019s well sad, Brett. Why won\u2019t the government fund you? Or the council?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u2018Because they don\u2019t fund people like me, and I haven\u2019t got the time to play their silly games.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And you don\u2019t have to take my word on this either. Following her time at the influential Side Gallery in Newcastle, Tish Murtha wrote a letter to Dennis Birkwood, her college tutor at Newcastle College of Arts and Technology, which Maxine Peake also narrates in the documentary:<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2018I left the Side Gallery for a number of reasons, but mainly because of their peculiar attitude to me and my work \u2013 they wanted to manipulate it to fit their group philosophy \u2026 And the boss\u2019 girlfriend was getting really spiteful and bitchy towards us, damaging expensive photographic work \u2026 \u2018accidentally on purpose\u2019. So, as they obviously thought it was all a big joke, and I should be grateful for any situation they offered, I told them all where to stick their job and what an offensive, incestuous little clique they were.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In 2013 an exhausted Tish Murtha had to die from a brain aneurysm while on the dole for her photography to be finally recognised by national and international cultural commentators for what it is \u2013 the work of a major 20<sup>th<\/sup> century artist.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-16115\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Karen_on_Overturned_Chair_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha.jpg\" alt=\"Karen on Overturned Chair Youth Unemployment 1981 Ella Murtha\" width=\"532\" height=\"356\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Karen_on_Overturned_Chair_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha.jpg 1616w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Karen_on_Overturned_Chair_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-600x401.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Karen_on_Overturned_Chair_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-300x200.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Karen_on_Overturned_Chair_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-441x295.jpg 441w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Karen_on_Overturned_Chair_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-768x513.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Karen_on_Overturned_Chair_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-1536x1027.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Karen_on_Overturned_Chair_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-1x1.jpg 1w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Karen_on_Overturned_Chair_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-10x7.jpg 10w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 532px) 100vw, 532px\" \/>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Karen on Overturned Chair, Youth Unemployment (1981) \u00a9 Ella Murtha<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Tish Murtha took a number of photographs of Karen Lafferty which appear in the &#8216;Youth Unemployment&#8217; series. This particular image, which Tish would playfully refer to as &#8216;Saturday night out on the dole&#8217;, is currently a part of a collection at the National Portrait Gallery.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Her gloriously grim visions of broken buildings, broken people and broken Britain were ignored by the mainstream during her lifetime because they revealed truths about this country that simply made the authorities uneasy, but not ashamed: the inequality, the hypocrisy and the cruelty.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the self-entitled and self-serving right-wing establishment which the UK is cursed with relies upon, and revels in, keeping working-class culture in its place, down in its oubliette, year after year, decade after decade. At the very least it reminds the rest of the population of what to expect if they too decide to step out of line and speak up. What is more chilling however is that, while protected and empowered by the ideological and repressive state apparatus surrounding them, this establishment\u2019s key historical figures have the experience, resources, personnel and desire to continue this war of attrition until the very end of time.<\/p>\n<p>It is their country after all. For example, only just this week the official portrait of King Charles III was unveiled and, in turn, an \u00a38 million scheme was announced by the Tory Cabinet Office to permit schools, police stations, hospitals and councils to request a free A3-size, oak-framed copy to hang wherever they see fit.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a38 million! Following her death, aged 57, Tish Murtha received a \u00a3100 rebate from her energy company.<\/p>\n<p>She wasn\u2019t a working-class photographer. She was a war photographer.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-16116\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_Jumping_on_to_Mattresses_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha.jpg\" alt=\"Kids Jumping on to Mattresses Youth Unemployment 1981 Ella Murtha\" width=\"557\" height=\"368\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_Jumping_on_to_Mattresses_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha.jpg 1631w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_Jumping_on_to_Mattresses_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-600x397.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_Jumping_on_to_Mattresses_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-300x199.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_Jumping_on_to_Mattresses_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-441x292.jpg 441w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_Jumping_on_to_Mattresses_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-768x509.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_Jumping_on_to_Mattresses_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-1536x1017.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_Jumping_on_to_Mattresses_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-1x1.jpg 1w, http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Kids_Jumping_on_to_Mattresses_Youth_Unemployment_1981__Ella_Murtha-10x7.jpg 10w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 557px) 100vw, 557px\" \/>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Kids Jumping on to Mattresses, Youth Unemployment (1981) \u00a9 Ella Murtha<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>With Mark Murtha, one of Tish&#8217;s brothers, holding on to a ventriloquist dummy (bottom left), this photograph now features in an exhibition at Tate Britain. As her daughter, Ella Murtha, tells us in the documentary: &#8216;To actually say that Tate Britain has acquired me mam&#8217;s work for a permanent collection &#8230; The whole thought of that is just quite overwhelming really.&#8217;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p><em>Paul Sng\u2019s documentary \u2018Tish\u2019 (2023), which chronicles the life and times of the late North East photographer, Patricia Murtha, is currently screening at selected cinemas across the UK, and is available internationally via the <a href=\"https:\/\/homecinema.curzon.com\/film\/tish\/\">Curzon Home Cinema<\/a><\/em><em> website.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Please also visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tishmurtha.co.uk\/\">www.tishmurtha.co.uk<\/a><\/em><em>, which is run by her daughter, Ella Murtha, for further information about her exceptional mother. Thanks to Ella for permission to use Tish&#8217;s photographs.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Thanks also for additional research for this review, by Jack Clarke \/\u00a0@ClarkeJ98<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brett Gregory reviews &#8216;Tish&#8217;, directed by Paul Sng, 2023, and presents some of Tish Murtha&#8217;s photographs &#8216;My use of photography and the approach to it is based&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":651,"featured_media":16107,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1664],"tags":[2134,2956,1754],"class_list":["post-16118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films-2","tag-ace","tag-elswick","tag-thatcher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/651"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}