ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes two exhibitions that blur the boundaries between art and community engagement
Dignity in adversity
JOHN GREEN highly recommends a spellbinding photo album that reveals, movingly, the personal and communal dimension of the momentous miners’ strike of 1984-85
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews I Am Martin Parr, September Says, The Monkey, and The Gorge
RITA DI SANTO applauds a touching and witty opener that touches a hot topic in Germany: the future of the immigrant population
SIMON PARSONS is discomfited by an unflichingly negative portrait of motherhood and its trials
PAUL FOLEY recommends an extraordinary double bill that packs a punch and leaves you reeling
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a play about AI that results in a deadening disconnect for its audience
SIMON PARSONS applauds an insightful state-of-the-nation play that explores the growing class divide in South Africa
The Enemy Within - The Miners Strike 1984/85
By Michael Kerstgens
Dewi Lewis, £35.00
THIS photo album is an unusual one in showcasing images taken by a young German student who, almost by accident, became intimately involved in the big British miners’ strike of 1984/85.
Michael Kerstgens’s book documents the lives and struggles of the strikers based in the village of Wombwell, near Barnsley in the Yorkshire coalfield. As a hard-up student, he was generously taken in by a local miner, Stuart “Spud” Marshall and his wife, Marsha, who lived in a small, terraced house, along with their son, Mark, daughter, Jill, and Jill’s boyfriend.
He relates: “From the window of his house, you could see the strikebound Darfield Main Colliery. So it was that I landed right in the middle of one of the most bitter industrial conflicts that the UK has ever seen. It was agreed I could stay for as long as I liked, accompany them wherever they went, and, most important of all, take photographs.
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