Alan Whitfield
My documentary films and photographs are a social commentary, steeped in the urban, industrial landscape of my northern British roots. I’m attempting to represent a visceral melancholy, a longing and loss. The colours I capture often conjure the emotional impact of the ravages of capitalism and time on the individual and the community.
I focus on the overlooked, abandoned, where thriving, prosperous communities have been replaced by derelict modernist architecture, concrete fragments of factories or shops that signal human endeavour, labour and loss.
My dyslexia inform my work. I use mis-registers, misunderstandings, and malapropisms to shape the flow and rhythm of my poems and performance. My poetry performances are a vulnerable, fizzing battle cry for the working class. I choose to stage them in non-arts contexts, from car parks, underpasses, caravans, abandoned houses, bingo halls, market halls to tea dances.
I want my work to be as accessible as possible, so I’m trying to find touch points that people recognise but reflect the environment back to them in a new way.
