Coal, Steel and Earth: Photographs of Kingshill and Ravenscraig

Coal, Steel and Earth is the result of a collaboration between two artists, Frank McElhinney and John Farrell, who were born and raised in Lanarkshire. The exhibition is the exploration of Kingshill and Ravenscraig; one was a coalmine that fed the other, a great steelworks. Over a number of years, a picture was formed of what became of these former industrial sites, rather than what remains of them. Those of us who have some connection to these landscapes project our own histories onto them. We look back. The photographs are intended to be of now. Fresh, open eyed, as objective as photographs might be. Nevertheless, the work invokes history as a process of change, and begs the question what kind of future do we want to build?