New exhibition looks at demise of coal industry

AN art gallery is launching a new exhibition exploring the demise of coal pits, the miners’ strike and the impact on local communities.

The Last Cage Down is being held at the Mining Art Gallery, in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, from Friday until October 6.

Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the 1984-85 miners’ strike, the exhibition brings together works of art portraying the declining years of the coal mining industry and the way of life before it was lost.

Exhibits include Robert Olley’s Orgreave after Guernica, depicting a violent confrontation between pickets and police in South Yorkshire in 1984, and Barrie Ormsby’s Crucified Miner.

Mr Ormsby said: “Before the miners’ strikes, most of my paintings were a response to the natural landscape around me in West Durham, and although I have continued to work with the landscape, the social landscape has come to the fore.

“The artist cooperative I was a part of for 30 years supported miners and their families during the strike through food distribution. Painting helped me process the sociopolitical enormity of the strikes. Through painting and thinking, I understood that this was a conflict between the collective and the communal, and the individual and the state.”