| Description | The archive has a particular focus on Cockpit Gallery Holborn exhibition programme, with some material also relating to touring shows. This material includes posters, prints, invoices and cuttings. There is also some documentation of events, including transparencies and negatives of installation and buildings.
The gallery's shows covered a wide range of social and political issues from educational, activist and artistic perspectives, with a broad educational and community mindset.
It was part of a broader development of photographic practices in the 1970s and 1980s, concerning issues of social emancipation and representation. Some of the exhibitions were co-curated with participants or with other community groups or with school students who were encouraged to take portraits of each other, or self-portraits.
In other exhibitions, the gallery invited established photographers to show their work who were also dealing with issues of representation, such as Armet Francis, Anita Corbin, and Jo Spence.
Notable projects include:
'100 Months of Women’s Liberation with Spare Rib', 1980
'Julie Mimmack: The Cage is Fixed', 1981
'Promises, Promises': An exhibition based on Henry Grant's Photographs, 1984
'Our Way of Rockin',' 1984
'Armet Francis: The Black Triangle', 1985
'Staying on: A photographic exhibition about staying on at school', 1985
'Homeworking: Time for Change', 1985
'On Yer Bikes Boys', 1986
'The Picture of Health?' A touring exhibition by Jessica Evans, Rosy Martin, Maggie Murray, Jo Spence, Yana [?Jana] Stajno, 1986
'Aurat Shakti: Asian Women Living in the Country,' Cockpit Gallery Holborn, 3 - 26 Mar 1986
Jo Spence, Photography Workshop, 'Beyond the Family Album... Public and Private Images', 1987
Rosy Martin and the Women’s Design Service, 'It’s Not All Swings and Roundabouts', 1989. |
| Individual or organisational biography | The archive originated as part of the Cockpit Arts Workshop formed at Cockpit Theatre, Gateforth Street, Marylebone, with the Theatre In Education team.
The team established a visual arts department which then comprised Andrew Dewdney, Martin Lister, Alan Tomkins and Adrian Chappel. The department then established a gallery, and moved to a building in Princeton Street, Holborn in 1978.
In Holborn there was more exhibition space and also room for a photography studio. Eilean Hooper Greenhill also worked at Cockpit around this time.
When the team moved to Holborn, they rebranded as ‘The Cultural Studies Department (ILEA)’. The name 'The Cultural Studies Department' was inspired by the writings of Stuart Hall and others involved in the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), at the University of Birmingham. They also began at this time creating a journal, titled, ‘Schooling and Culture’.
It is the influence of Stuart Hall and the Birmingham school that brought a strong interest in the question of ‘representation,’ particularly of marginalised groups in society in Cockpit’s work. Like the Camerawork collection, these ideas of representation met and mixed with influences from earlier historical left-wing perspectives.
In some cases, the exhibitions crossed over into working with other activist groups as well. Other contemporary education theories formed the back group as well, such as ‘Integrated Arts' (bringing different artforms together within arts education, to provide new ways of teaching art in schools). Forms of child-centred education such as Adventure Playgrounds were also an influence.
Cockpit designed exhibitions for touring, as educational resources for community spaces. They followed a model similar to that developed by the Photography Workshop, Half Moon Gallery, and later Camerawork. Some exhibitions originally developed by The Photography Workshop came to toured by Cockpit after there was a split within the Half Moon Photography Workshop and Camerawork Journal teams.
Jo Spence, an original founder of The Photography Workshop, and then involved with Camerawork, came to Cockpit as an administrator, around 1982, following the split at Camerawork.
Cockpit supported several exhibitions developed by Jo Spence and fellow collaborators from the women’s photography collectives the Hackney Flashers (including Maggie Murray), and the Polysnappers (Mary Ann Kennedy, Jane Munro, Charlotte Pembrey), and Rosy Martin.
ILEA (Inner London Educational Authority) funded and managed Cockpit under their Community Education and Careers Branch. The gallery continued until 1990, when the restructure of local government under Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative party, which abolished ILEA. At this point, the Cockpit Gallery closed and the touring exhibitions transferred to Camerawork to continue touring.
See also:
Stevie Bezencenet and Philip Richard D. Corrigan, Photographic Practices: Towards a Different Image, Comedia Series (London: Comedia, 1986).
Andrew Dewdney and Martin Lister, Youth, Culture and Photography, Youth Questions (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1988). |
| Custodial History | When ILEA was abolished, the Cockpit Gallery closed and the touring exhibitions were transferred to Camerawork to continue touring.
When Camerawork journal also ended, both the Camerawork archive and exhibition material on Cockpit ended up at Four Corners gallery.
In 2006, Shirley Read, a former member of the Half Moon Photography Workshop and the Camerawork cooperative retrieved and donated a large part of the Camerawork collection (can be seen at CWC), to the Photography and the Archive Research Centre (PARC), a research centre of the University of the Arts London (UAL), under the directorship of Val Williams, for safeguarding.
Also included with the deposit were a number of files relating to projects at Cockpit Gallery. She recognised the importance of the Cockpit archive alongside Camerawork's and brought it to PARC at the same time.
PARC recognised the material as a valuable study resource, housed the collection and made part of its content accessible to researchers, staff and the public – including PhD students and academics. It was promoted through PARC’s own website and newsletters and two exhibitions.
This archive was donated to the University Archives and Special Collections Centre in 2019 as part of a larger deposit of PARC holdings. It was repackaged and listed by a former member of PARC staff, Robin Christian, when it came to ASCC.
Cataloguing was based on his lists and notes on the folders, as well as additional research and correspondence with Shirley Read, Claire Grey and Andrew Dewdney. |