http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/contemporary-art-society-nothing-beautiful-unless-useful
'From works by the Pre-Raphaelites and L.S. Lowry, to exquisite Victorian glassware and lustrous artist-designed ‘Pilkington Pots’, this display celebrates works in public collections across the North West of England and poses the question – what role should art play in social change ?’
A small show of artworks, craft and photographs that is a bit like a northern curiosity shop. There’s small pieces by William Holman Hunt and a lovely poem by John Ruskin that might well serve the HS2 protesters:
There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell, once upon a time, divine as the vale of Tempe; you might have seen the Gods there morning and evening, — Apollo and all the sweet Muses of the Light — walking in fair procession on the lawns of it, and to and fro among the pinnacles of its crags. You cared neither for Gods nor grass, but for cash (which you did not know the way to get); you thought you could get it by what the Times calls "Railroad Enterprise." You Enterprised a Railroad through the valley — you blasted its rocks away, heaped thousands of tons of shale into its lovely stream. The valley is gone, and the gods with it; and now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton; which you think a lucrative process of exchange — you Fools Everywhere
Most interesting was a selection of images by the MASS OBSERVATION movement. Some charming imagery (made more charming by its naivety) of working class life in the black-and-white days of old. Humprey Jennings was a member of Mass Observation - a worthy pre-shadow of Instagram perhaps.
