'Too important to ignore' - Review: Resistance, Modern Two, Edinburgh
Moreover the images drive to the heart of the themes and concerns which have inspired the London-born artist and film-maker over the decades and which have powered works such as Small Axe, his TV anthology examining the experience of growing up Black in the UK, Hunger, his 2008 film starring Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands, leader of the 1981 hunger strike of Irish Republican prisoners, and Blitz, his 2024 drama about British society in wartime starring Saoirse Ronan as the mother of a bi-racial child.
Paul Trevor, Anti racists gather to block route of National Front demonstration, New Cross Road, London, August 1977 (Image: Paul Trevor)
The idea of show was to 'explore the idea of resistance within the context of 20th century British history,' says Wallis. It started as a lockdown project between her and McQueen and was first mounted at the Turner Contemporary in February. The Edinburgh run will be only its second UK showing.
'It was four years of really intensive research looking across a whole range of different archives in England, Scotland and Wales, and also dipping into Northern Ireland,' Wallis explains. 'But before that we had to do a lot of political research in terms of mapping 20th century history. Now looking at it, it's very obvious how it connects to issues which are at the heart of what Steve's interested in at the moment – this sense of corrected histories or under-represented histories. You can see that in his Blitz project or his Small Axe films.'
The exhibition runs from 1903 to 2003, the year of the massive protests against the UK's participation in a war in Iraq which many viewed as illegal. That cut-off point has another rationale: it avoids the era of the smartphone image and the Instagram reel and instead relies on the work of established documentary photographers, as well as activists embedded in the movements represented, or professionals whose work is less known but equally illuminating.
Among the first group are names such as John Deakin, Bauhaus-trained Edith Tudor-Hart (also a Soviet spy), noted landscape photographer Fay Godwin, and Humphrey Spender, brother of poet Stephen Spender. He was a member of the Mass Observation unit, which charted British working class life over three decades from the 1930s.
Andrew Testa, Allercombe tree village, on the route of the proposed A30 Honiton Bypass, Devon, December 1996 (Image: Andrew Testa)
Among the second group are people such as Associated Press photographer Eddie Worth, who photographed the Battle of Cable Street and later the Normandy landings. Jamaica-born Vanley Burke, who began documenting Black communities in Birmingham in 1967 in an effort to counteract stereotypical beliefs about immigrants. Tish Murtha, one of ten children raised in a Newcastle council estate who documented 'marginalized communities from the inside', in her own words. Or self-taught Paul Trevor, who photographed life in and around London's Brick Lane in the 1970s and 1980s, an era of high racial tensions. His picture of anti-racist demonstrators gathering to block a National Front march in London's New Cross area in 1977 is the Resistance poster image.
In the show you will also find our old friend Anonymous, who has captured one of its most powerful images: working class Suffragette Annie Kenney being swarmed by angry-looking men as she is arrested at a march in London in April, 1913.
An Oldham cotton worker since the age of 10 – by 13 she was pulling 12-hour shifts – Kenney became a Socialist and a leading light in the Suffragette movement. She would be imprisoned and force fed after going on hunger strikes, requiring her to be carried into Suffragette meetings on a stretcher, and in 1921 wrote a series of articles for The Sunday Post describing her life and experiences.
Bringing Resistance more up to date are images of protests against road-building projects (see Andrew Testa's striking 1996 shot of two men literally hugging trees high in a forest in Devon), against overseas wars (Andrew Wiard's 2003 shot of massed crowds protesting the imminent Iraq War) and others dealing with everything from disability rights to trans activism.
Along the way, the exhibition demonstrates how, in Wallis's words, 'movements build upon predecessors' tactics while developing new approaches and creating an evolving tradition of resistance.'
But though the protests are many and varied, the over-arching story Resistance has to tell is simple enough. 'It's thinking about contemporary rights and freedoms that maybe we take for granted,' says Wallis.
In that sense, it is a story too important to ignore.
Resistance opens at Modern Two, Edinburgh on Saturday, June 21 (until January 4, 2026)
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