Industrialised

Industrialised, Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, 2019

Industrialised saw a three-month-long exhibition take place at Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery providing a rare, multi-disciplinary view of the making industries, mass production, the human contribution to manufacturing and the physical impacts of factory making on our landscape.

Featuring work by fourteen local, national and international artists, Industrialised presented a myriad of artistic disciplines including ceramics, photography, painting, contemporary furniture making, film and sculpture.

Included in the exhibition was the work of renowned, French photographer, Charles Freger (acclaimed for his 2012 Wilder Mann project) and his rarely seen, Bleus de Travail (‘Work Overalls’) series. Shown for the first time in a UK gallery, the portraits count as some of Freger’s earliest work and are the result of a long-term study of technical college students during the 90s, capturing the straight-faces, work stations and protective clothing of young trainees.

“Artists have continued to rely on the skills of fabricators, forgers, casters and welders to realise their creative works and place them in the public view. Artists from Lowry to Rauschenberg have been heavily inspired by the visual imagery of factories and the humanity of the industry working inside them. Industrialised is a showcase of contemporary artists and current approaches to working with, or reflecting on these same subject matters, and in this we can see a new set of social commentaries on industries deeply resonant effect on global and local politics, social structures and our environment today.”

Alex Zawadzki, Curator of Industrialised